DAZED AND CONFUSED

Fresh from denying reports that he had said Chelsea are hell-bent on ruining football, Sir Alex Ferguson provided evidence to suggest that he is hell-bent on getting his psychological retaliation in early this season.

He will be unable to pin the blame on errant South African journalists this time, given that his remarks came in the latest edition of Manchester United's official club magazine, Inside United. While championing the greatest bargains of his tenure, Ferguson welcomed Andriy Shevchenko to England by asking whether he is really 35 times better than Eric Cantona, who signed for United in 1992. While few would disagree with Ferguson's appraisal, the fact that he used Chelsea's record purchase to highlight the Frenchman's cut-price genius had an air of mischief about it.

It may be only the tittle-tattle that forms the preamble to any tilt at the title, but it will interest José Mourinho coming so soon after the comments printed and denied in the Johannesburg Star. Last season, the “Special One” compiled a dossier of comments made by Arsène Wenger about Chelsea. It ran to 120 pages and seemed to be proof of a mutual obsession. Volume two may be equally heavy reading.

Mourinho's relationship with Ferguson has fluctuated between the chummy (bottles of Barca Velha) and the angry (claiming that last year's Carling Cup semi-final, first leg at Stamford Bridge was a case of “whistle and whistle, fault and fault, cheat and cheat”). In his programme notes before the second leg, Ferguson wrote: “Don't believe everything you read about mind games. We get on.”

However, had Ferguson wanted to keep his thoughts on United's best buys in-house, he might have asked whether Cantona was 29 times worse than Juan Sebastián Verón. Instead, the manager said: “If you look at us signing Eric Cantona for £1 million — and I think this is probably the best way to do it — and how much you're seeing centre forwards like Shevchenko going for, you have to ask yourself this: is Shevchenko 35 times better than Cantona?” Albeit that Ferguson inflated Shevchenko's fee — he is actually only 30 times better than Cantona in terms of the price — there is no doubt the cash chasm between the biggest club in Britain and the richest has never seemed greater.

Perhaps that is why Ferguson mentioned Shevchenko, who had a middling World Cup for Ukraine on the back of a knee injury, and was so effusive of his praise of a player from happier times. “We thought he was the best player ever, but it is only when you look back at videos of what he did that you think, ‘Bloody hell',” he said of Cantona.