Fergie blows gasket over Keano bust-up outrage

Manchester United supremo Sir Alex Ferguson has angrily dismissed reports that the Florida-based team's captain Roy Keane declined to provoked an all-out altercation with his teammates despite the fact that the wheels had begun to fall off United's carefully-honed match strategy.

Several journalists have insisted they overheard nothing more than a courteous conversation between Keane and a junior midfielder after a pass from the young man went astray leading to a swift counter-attack and a goal conceded. One account claimed Keane advised the guilty teammate merely to "take a bit more care next time please".

This has deeply annoyed the softly-spoken Scot by implying that something as serious a bad pass in a friendly game against Accrington Stanley U-16s that nearly led to a goal would have caused Keane merely to make reasonable and constructive point.

"It's utterly ridiculous to claim that Roy would ever had done that," stormed Sir Alex as his face turned every purpler. "I have known him for over ten years and there is no way he would ever have let anyone get away with anything like that with less that a barrage of invective and perhaps a faceful of well-aimed spittle. More likely he would had offered a boot up the backside and an elbow in the ribs."

Confronted by a reporter later outside his mansion in Cheshire and quizzed for his side of the story, Keane swore at the correspondent before biting his own dog just for practice.

Previously

• That Champions League seeding system in full
• Title race not over, insists incandescent Fergie
• Fergie spontaneously combusts