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The papers are mainly looking towards the future today, using our defeat at the hands of Barca to ask where we go now, using it for transfer gossip and speculation about whose on the way out.

Which might be considered a bit strange.  On the one hand, nothing we could have done would have made any difference, Barca are a class apart etc., etc., but on the other hand we have to do x and y to compete with Barca and not only that, if we'd already done these things maybe things would have been different.  It's like they want it both ways - they have to masturbate over Barcelona, but they run out of superlatives so they then have to criticise us for not stopping the just-stated unstoppable.

The worst culprit in this regard is Kevin McCarra in The Guardian who veers from the "It doesn't matter what they did Barca were too good," to "United should..." and "United could," in, sometimes the same sentence.  he starts off with

Pep Guardiola's side turned United into an irrelevance at Wembley. This time, Ferguson was frank. Late on Saturday night, the 69-year-old implied that he and the rest of the rivals will have to weather Barcelona's storm of excellence until it blows itself out.

Then in the next paragraph tells us what we need, even though it was irrelevant apparently... Then he considers the match itself an irrelevance:

 After such a fixture, the mind turns to a reshaping of the Old Trafford squad that was inevitable regardless of the outcome.

In the match report, he's writing off the match as unimportant.

The worst stories of the day are these two from The Sun and The Daily Star. Asking whether the time could be right for Sir Alex to go, The Daily Star even go so far to say:

Fergie is a man who can clearly handle the pressure but United did not look like they had moved any further forward from 2009 and maybe it is time for someone else, dare I say younger, to take up the challenge the Old Trafford legend is talking about. 

Daniel Taylor in The Guardian is more sensible on the subject:

Ferguson, who will be 70 this year, is approaching the 25th anniversary of his appointment. But the most successful manager in the game still sees himself as being in the job on a long-term basis and has told United that only his health will prevent him from working.

Instead the manager is going to break up his squad in what promises to be a summer of change at Old Trafford, with up to 10 players on their way out. The Glazer family have told Ferguson that he will be given substantial funds with which to purchase replacements.

It is nearly 10 years since Ferguson announced a plan to retire, only to change his mind and talk of nearly having made "the biggest mistake of my life". His spending this summer will be designed to close the gap on a Barcelona side whose masterclass of passing at Wembley strengthened their claim to be recognised as the greatest club side ever.

Then he speculates on transfer targets and has this quote from Berba's agent:

Asked about reports that Berbatov had left Wembley early, the striker's agent, Emil Danchev, said: "It's nonsense. Mitko [Berbatov] was at Wembley and watched the game. There is nothing to say. Let us take a few days."

Daniel Taylor has a longer look at the Berba situation on The Guardian Blog, speculating on his future. And concluding:

Berbatov has fiddled with our minds, enthralled us, disappointed us,exhilarated and exasperated but in the years to come it may be that the game for which he is always remembered came on a Saturday night in London when he never even had to lace his boots.

The Sun tell us he's off.  With no evidence.  They also claim he went "straight on to the team bus at the final whistle," despite this being unsourced and I've not seen the claim elsewhere.

The Mirror tell us that Sir Alex is going to get rid.  Again unsourced.  And where's he off?  Silly rumour of a swap deal (how many swap deals have ever happened despite the papers constantly trumpeting them? 

Ferguson is understood to be considering using Berbatov in a player-plus-cash swap deal with the striker's former club, Tottenham, to land his top summer transfer target - creative midfielder Luka Modric.

YAWN.

The Independent also give us their thoughts on Berba, and a quote from Nani:

In April 2008, Nani marched out of Old Trafford early when his removal at half-time against Tottenham meant he had been had been substituted on each of six league starts and never made it beyond 70 minutes. "It's a very difficult moment for him, but not [like] my position," Nani said of Berbatov.

"I was in a different position because I was still very young back then. I was 21 and I knew I had a lot of time to learn, to improve and get my place in the team. For him, I don't know what [the manager] has in mind but everyone knows he's a fantastic player, he has scored a lot of goals, finished as the top scorer in the league."

And the Independent won't hear talk of Sir Alex leaving, they have him determined to stay longer.

Sir Alex Ferguson is contemplating extending his Old Trafford tenure to give himself long enough to dismantle the Barcelona dynasty and achieve his elusive goal of establishing Manchester United as one of the greats of European football.

There's a piece on The Guardian blog on our youth coming through which includes this unnecessary criticisms of our midfield:

You can win England's domestic trophies with a midfield permed from Scholes, Giggs, Anderson, Michael Carrick, Darren Fletcher and Darron Gibson, and you can even get to the final of the European Cup, but only in a lucky year, when your opponents in the final have somehow slipped through quality control (or when, as in 2008, they are another Premier League team), will you win the competition by which the continent's elite clubs define themselves. Ferguson was unlucky with Fletcher's fitness last week, but Giggs and Carrick were unable to make a greater impression on the game than they had managed in Rome two years ago, even in a formation rejigged from 4-3-3 to 4-4-2

Has he heard of Ronaldo who I'm fairly sure started in 2008 and 2009, and Fletcher wasn't fit enough for Saturday so what's that about? And if the Premier League is so weak that our rubbish midfield can dominate it wouldn't the writer be better served looking at ways forward for the rest of the teams in it - we won it by 9 points.

Finally The Mail have their top names telling us what went wrong - Jamie Redknapp, Jamie Carragher, Martin Keown... Opinions like that we can do without...