Maybe he ought to take a look in the mirror before making comments such as these. While it’s understandable that Sir Alex Ferguson is getting a ’squeaky bum’ at the thought of losing Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid, surely the speculation regarding a potential move is as much down to the player himself than the club trying to court him?

The Times reports that the Manchester United manager has accused the Spanish giants of having no morals when it comes to shamelessly flirting with the best player in the world, yet the Scot has become renowned for unsettling transfer targets of his own over the years, and clearly isn’t enjoying a taste of his own medicine.

“They think they can ride roughshod over everyone but they won’t do it with us,” Ferguson said. “Real Madrid have no moral issues at all.

“In terms of great clubs, Barcelona have far better morality than Real Madrid will ever have. Do you not think we have had many expressions of interest about our players from big clubs in Europe?

“Real Madrid are not the only club interested in Ronaldo. But the others are not saying so. They don’t get into this nonsense.”

“I read on Teletext last night; Calderon is talking, Schuster is talking,” he said. “Calderon makes that great statement ‘Slavery was abolished many years ago’. Did they tell Franco that? Give me a break. The simple fact is Cristiano has another four years left on his contract.”

You can almost have some sympathy for Fergie. After all, United are usually the ones flinging their weight around rather than being raided for their prize asset. Ultimately, if Ronaldo wants to bugger off to Spain, there’s very little that SAF can do about it, apart from demand a hefty ransom fee and then try to solve the near-impossible conundrum of how to replace the Portuguese forward.