Lazyitis

And to the rest of the papers. Which are just as rubbish. The Sun finds a token Man Utd fan to slag off the team selection. The Mail tells us what Ronaldo was doing Saturday night. He wasn't in the team, what does it matter? Every man and his dog has a go at Berbatov, with only this, from Daniel Taylor, worthy of serious attention, looking at Berbatov pretty objectively:

Ferguson is not an admirer of supporters' websites and message boards, particularly in this knee-jerk era when a footballer can be pilloried one week and exalted the next, but it would be difficult for him not to detect the growing disillusion when it comes to the virtual disappearance of a player who was signed, lest it be forgotten, on the basis of Ferguson's unrelenting and almost obsessive belief that he would elevate the European champions to a new tier of greatness.

Docherty, who is now a pundit on BBC Radio Manchester, has been so outspoken over the years that his opinions are now greeted with a knowing roll of the eyes at Old Trafford but the former United manager spoke for a lot of supporters recently when he said of Berbatov that he "doesn't seem interested" and "should look at Carlos Tevez and see the way he always grafts to win the ball back".

Ferguson, however, is not even willing to accept his £30.75m signing, the scorer of 23 goals for Tottenham Hotspur last season, has taken a backward turn. "I don't see any evidence at all of him tailing off," said the United manager when asked whether Berbatov's almost apologetic attempt to beat Everton's goalkeeper, Tim Howard, in Sunday's penalty shoot-out at Wembley symbolised the way the player's season had gone.

"He came on and actually did quite well," Ferguson continued. "He did really well. He is disappointed to miss a penalty, of course, and he will get criticised for that. When you pay £30m for a player, then everyone thinks he should be able to score a penalty. But it's not just about that."

All very well, except the lesson of history is that Ferguson will publicly defend his players even when it is blindingly obvious that something has not quite clicked. Berbatov has scored 13 goals in 36 games, including four appearances as a substitute. Add to that 12 assists and his statistics do not look too shabby at all – certainly not bad enough to deserve Docherty's description of him as an "absolute disaster" – but it is the frequency with which games are passing him by that is troubling.

Sir Alex's view on his team selection is given in The Mirror:

“I can understand that after Sunday there would be some criticism because it didn’t work for us, but I’m absolutely convinced I picked the right team,” he said. “I have no regrets about it at all.

“The way I looked at it is Everton’s season has been excellent. We’ve had two tough games against them in the league this season. We drew one each at Goodison and beat them with a penalty kick at Old Trafford.

“That tells you in a given game against Everton, there’s little in it no matter what side I played.

“So I felt with the programme we have coming up – don’t get me wrong, we want to win everything – I took the realistic view that the priority has to be the league and the Champions League.

“That’s a plain fact of life. Also extra-time at Wembley is tough – we experienced that against Tottenham in the Carling Cup.”

Rio Ferdinand is quoted in The Daily Star:

“Is this the start of another wobble? We’ll see on Wednesday when we play Portsmouth. We know what we’re capable of. We’re confident. We are disappointed to lose the semi-final.

“But we’ve got another game coming quickly now. We have to concentrate on that.”

Elsewhere. Wes Brown came through 60 minutes of a reserve yesterday The Mirror report.
There's some words from The Da Silva twins doing the rounds, here, from The Independent, which, it galls me to say, is probably worth a read in full:

The club's "hard work" paid dividends, they say, and Ferguson – or "Señor Alex" as they have taken to call him – has evidently made an impression too. "He always speaks well and is always very supportive of us," Fabio says. "He really likes to know what people are like both on and off the field. But he jokes around with us too." ...
"He is a really good friend of ours," Rafael says of Ferdinand. "Of course, he is serious when he has to be, but really he is the biggest joker on the team. We love to have him on our team in training; he is always messing about with the ball with [Cristiano] Ronaldo and playing tricks on the other players with Patrice. Once, Anderson came to training in his slippers, and they set fire to his slippers and tipped cream out all over them. During training everyone is serious. But the most serious would be [Paul] Scholes."

More on the Rafa/Sir Alex spat, with Sir Alex saying:

"I made my point about it. I don't understand why he did it," he said. "I don't want to go on about it anymore. I made my point. There is no point carrying it on. It's plain for everybody to see now. I have made my issue about it."

And the LMA reportedly stepping in to halt it.
The other story about being on the OFT and season tickets:

Responding to a complaint from the Manchester United Supporters' Trust, the OFT said yesterday that the Premier League champions could continue their cup policy next season, provided fans were warned of the extra cost. The trust had sought a legal opinion about the policy, claiming that it was a further blow to fans who have faced large increases in ticket prices since the American tycoon Malcolm Glazer took charge of the club in 2005.

The OFT said that, although United had the right to demand automatic payment for cup games, there were a "number of potentially unfair terms" in their season-ticket policy.

After the announcement, the club agreed to guarantee season-ticket holders tickets for all cup games next year, regardless of allocations for officials and opposing fans.