Sir Alex Ferguson could be fined and banned from the touchline after the Manchester United manager admitted an FA misconduct charge yesterday. Ferguson was accused of using abusive and insulting language towards Mark Clattenburg, the referee, during United’s defeat by Bolton Wanderers at the Reebok Stadium on November 24.

Ferguson was sent to the stands by Clattenburg at half-time after a verbal disagreement in the tunnel. The manager was upset at what he perceived as a lack of protection for his players from Clattenburg in the face of some aggressive tackling from Bolton. “I told [Clattenburg] exactly what I thought and he didn’t like it,” Ferguson said after the match. “I told him just how bad he was in the first half.” The FA said yesterday that Ferguson had not requested a personal hearing and that his punishment would be determined “in due course”.

United play AS Roma in the Champions League tomorrow and Louis Saha fears that players will be subjected to racist abuse in Italy. “You will see it on Wednesday, I think,” the striker said, speaking at a conference at Old Trafford on racism and bullying. “In those kind of places it seems like they are used to it. They don’t fight it like we have done in England.”

Saha said he has often been abused on the pitch. “In football I’ve had many things thrown at me but I’ve always been a very calm person. I try to keep everything inside,” he said.

“Away from football it did happen once; I was 12-years-old when I was with my father at a game between Paris Saint-Germain and Sochaux at the Parc des Princes. I made a bad mistake of choosing the wrong coffee, so I went over to get another but the area was full of skinheads.

“My father decided to stand up to them and I was impressed. He showed me how to react by being calm and willing to do anything to protect me. From that day, I thought that is the way to fight it, because it is not right. We should not have to accept it.”