GLOATING is not becoming, but it's still hard to feel sorry for Sir Alex Ferguson and Manchester United.

Without a single doubt the Red Devils were the victims of the biggest daylight robbery since Dick Turpin was terrorising the byways of far from merry olde England.

No-one in their right mind could dispute that Malcolm Glazer's newest investment were the greatest casualties of an ambush, where the mugging was on a par with all those Z-list celebrities gurning for television cameras as they insincerely plead to 'get them off this desert island where they've been cooking in a hell's kitchen for someone who's not their big brother but could be their love-rat on a farm'.

If deadly rivals Arsenal had been a steak then they were pulverised, tenderised and virtually vaporised as Manchester United handed out a comprehensive caning to the Gunners in the last FA Cup final at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium. But United lost.

After 120 compelling and largely one-sided minutes, Arsenal prevailed in the first penalty shoot-out of the modern era. United thereby ended the campaign pot-less.

Normally such an outrageous reversal of fortune would have neutral football fans genuinely feeling for the side who plainly did not get their just reward.

But that is not the case for ManU, even if their woe has been compounded by the Glazer takeover that threatens to burden the world's most profitable football club with the sort of debt usually found to be strangling the life out of a third world country.

As this column has said before, ManU's fondness for raking in the cash always ensured it was a prime candidate for a hostile financial coup. You can't open a blood bank in Transylvania and not expect Count Dracula to pay a late-night call.

ManU's dynamic, dynastic domination of the Premiership has not garnered the plaudits it merits because that towering success has come hand in replica hand with a siege-like superiority akin to 'everyone hates us, but so what, we're better than everyone else'.

Envy is certainly at the core of the antipathy towards that high-heeled corner of east Lancashire. The only candidates on the horizon to steal the ManU mantle could be Chelsea. Not only do they revel in their newly-won Premiership pre-eminence they are backed by cash resources that Croesus, Midas and King Tut might not have matched.

But for this observer, it's an unwritten but immutable law of football that lies behind offering too much sympathy to Sir Alex and his black-shirted braves.

It's a law that was emblazoned across the back pages and across television screens terrestrial and Sky-hue less than a month ago when the European Champions League semi-finals were decided.

Chelsea and PSV Eindhoven were cited as 'the best teams who lost' in their respective duels with Liverpool and AC Milan - tomorrow's finalists in Turkey.

Yet that's what makes football the spectacle it is. There are no certainties. Sometimes the most deserving teams lose. Sometimes the teams who have no chance, maybe have no right to be on the same pitch, ultimately succeed.

If Sir Alex, his players and his disgruntled supporters need any reminding they need just cast their minds back to 1999 in Barcelona and the Champions League final. United completed the treble, but Bayern Munich were the best team.

Updated: 09:03 Tuesday, May 24, 2005