He gushed about Rooney and Ronaldo — how couldn’t he? — and he talked about how this squad was his strongest in his 22 years at Manchester United. He talked about their youthful potential and what they might become.

But in the aftermath of a tenth championship triumph, Sir Alex Ferguson could not stop himself bringing up his first and, it must be said, true love as United manager. It is not claret that makes Ferguson go all wistful and misty-eyed but reminiscing about the 1994 vintage. As if it was not enough to beat all present-day opponents, Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney must also compete against the ghosts of United past.

It is a battle that they can never expect to win. Ferguson’s first Double-winners are his favourite team and probably always will be, even if one Champions League victory in Moscow next week subsequently becomes two or three.

The criteria is not medals; it cannot be, or the 1999 treble-winners would forever be on the top rung. This is a test of personality and perhaps no English club team have ever combined so many charismatic, combustible and confrontational figures as the one that brought together Schmeichel, Bruce, Keane, Ince, Hughes and Cantona.

Ferguson loved that they won his first championship and then his first Double, he loved that they “knocked Liverpool off their f***ing perch” and he loved that, with Ryan Giggs and Andrei Kanchelskis piercing down the wings, you could set their forward play to Beethoven. But, mostly, Ferguson loved that they intimidated, they dominated, they bullied. Remind you of anyone?

They gave him no end of grief — he and Peter Schmeichel once came to blows — but he revered them all the more for their refusal to yield. Whether as a young dockworker, a sharp-elbowed centre forward, a pub landlord in Govan or one of the great British managers, it is the fight as much as the victory that lights Ferguson’s fires.

These men of big personalities gave United the aura that they still turn to their advantage today. In winning the treble, the 1999 crop may have gone beyond anything that Eric Cantona or Steve Bruce achieved, but speak to the Nevilles, to David Beckham and to Paul Scholes and they will acknowledge their debt to their predecessors.

They were brought up in a brutal school, where Schmeichel, Paul Ince and Roy Keane would humiliate them as soon as snarl at a referee. Those uncompromising standards have been passed down through the generations, with Ferguson looking on to check that the torch is not dropped.

This present team have the will and they also possess style, class and a genuine world superstar in Ronaldo. Rooney and Carlos Tévez combine the best of all the great Ferguson teams — flair and ferocious desire — while the likes of Rio Ferdinand and Patrice Evra boast the highest technical calibre.

Yet Ferguson chose to talk about this being an outstanding squad rather than a great team because he knows that it is still striving to exert the domineering mastery that marks out the very best sides.

In the absence of a Keane or an Ince or Bryan Robson, they cannot do so with physical aggression. But as Arsenal have proved often enough, you can torment with the ball. It is a quality that Ferguson is still seeking to encourage through the Latin flair in Anderson, Ronaldo, Nani and Tévez.

With champagne already coursing through his tartan veins after victory away to Wigan Athletic on Sunday, Ferguson was drawn into debate about where this crop, with consecutive championships, sat among his creations.

“It’s my strongest squad, no doubt,” he said. “I brought 26 players with me to Wigan and everyone deserved to be here. Out of those 26 players, there’s only a couple who you say to yourself, ‘They won’t be here in two or three years’ time.’ ”

The claiming of more medals may force further revisions — would consecutive European Cups top a treble? — but, for all the discussion about best team and greatest squad, it is the 1994 group he loves most and probably always will (with the old three-foreigner rule giving them an excuse for failing to punch their weight in Europe).

It was the team that established this remarkable United era, but, more personal than that, it is the side Ferguson would have most liked to have played in — and celebrated with at the bar. It was the team who most represented the man himself, warts and all, although Ronaldo can probably live with that.

Fascinating show damned by the schedulers

A scheduling clash between Match of the Day and The South Bank Show might not normally be a cause of great vexation, but ITV did football fans a grave disservice when it pitched Melvyn Bragg against Gary Lineker on Sunday night.

Illogical timing by the schedulers will have meant that most football supporters missed the arts show’s examination of The Damned United, the acclaimed novel by David Peace that charts Brian Clough’s explosively short 44-day reign as manager of Leeds United in 1974 and which is the most daring British sports book ever published.

The best line came from one critic who said that it was the “duty of every creative writer to head for the nearest precipice”, and the show became an examination, a frustratingly brief one, of whether sport, and football in particular, attracts a boldness and quality of prose commensurate with its popularity.

Ever-opinionated, Eamon Dunphy derided the “hackery” of football coverage, while Michael Parkinson argued that some of the best writing in any newspaper was to be found at the back.

I’ll leave you to judge, but novelists and proper intellectuals are very welcome to the party if they bring Peace’s meticulous research and brilliant insight.

— Does Roman Abramovich ask any questions when he writes the cheques? If not, someone in his HQ should be demanding to know why the Chelsea owner has been required to spend almost £40 million on four right backs, from Glen Johnson through Paulo Ferreira and Juliano Belletti and now José Bosingwa. That is no joke, surely, even for a billionaire.