Humiliated Ferguson laments TV scheduling | Debate: does Ferguson have a point or does an extra day's rest make little difference? | Match report: Manchester United 1 Liverpool 4 | Patrick Barclay: Ferguson's European rivals can take heart from Liverpool's plan | Oliver Kay: Selling Ronaldo would make good business

Sir Alex Ferguson refused to speak to Sky Sports after Manchester United’s 4-1 defeat by Liverpool on Saturday in protest at the 12.45pm kick-off time, which he believes gave the Merseyside club an unfair advantage.

Liverpool’s victory was the biggest by an away team at Old Trafford since Queens Park Rangers won by the same scoreline on New Year’s Day 1992, but, as Rafael BenÍtez and his players were celebrating a result that gave them a glimmer of hope in the Barclays Premier League title race, Ferguson was making a silent protest at the scheduling of the game. His gripe was that United, having played the second leg of their Champions League tie against Inter Milan on Wednesday night, had only 2½ days to prepare for one of their biggest games of the Premier League campaign. Liverpool had an extra 24 hours, having beaten Real Madrid 4-0 on Tuesday evening.

BSkyB, the satellite broadcaster that is 39.1 per cent owned by News Corporation, parent company of The Times, was quick to identify the United-Liverpool fixture as one of its live matches for the weekend, but kick-off times are not finalised without the agreement of both clubs, the Premier League and the local police. Greater Manchester Police recommended that, because of the clubs involved, the match should start at lunchtime rather than, for example, the 5.30pm slot on a Saturday or 4pm on a Sunday. Ferguson is thought to have wanted the game at Sunday lunchtime, particularly as neither team have a fixture midweek.

Oddly, Ferguson does not appear to have used this as an excuse for his team’s abject performance. In an interview with MUTV, the club’s television station, he said that his team “kept driving on and showed good energy, even though we only had 2½ days to prepare for the match”.

Similarly, Mike Phelan, the assistant manager, told the BBC – another organisation boycotted by Ferguson, the only Premier League manager who does not attend a postmatch press conference – that “we can’t have any excuses for the way we played. We can’t have any complaints about anything. It was just a bad day at the office.”

Ferguson seemed unsure that it was such a bad performance, even making the startling claim in his MUTV interview that United had been “the better team”. Even United’s official website seemed to balk at that, leaving the comment out of the manager’s postmatch comments.

United remain strong favourites to win a third successive Premier League title. They still have a game in hand over Chelsea and Liverpool, whose wins at the weekend mean that the gap is down to four points.

But Steven Gerrard, the captain of the Merseyside club, believes that Saturday’s result could change the complexion of the title race. “I hope this result gives other teams belief that they can beat United,” Gerrard said, adding that, in Fernando Torres, Liverpool have the best centre forward in the world.

Javier Mascherano, the Liverpool midfield player, believes that his team will have to win all nine of their remaining games to have a chance of winning the title and that, even then, United would have to drop points. “I don’t know if we can win the league,” Mascherano said. “We don’t need to think about the title race right now. We just need to keep this form going. It would be wrong of us to start talking about being in the title race again because, if United don’t lose, it will be really difficult to catch them. We need to win all our games.

“The problem is that we have dropped a lot of important points at home. We have spoken about this in the dressing-room. When you lose points at Anfield to Hull and Manchester City and other teams like that, you have to be disappointed, but even more so now we have gone to Old Trafford and won so well. All we can do now is keep going. There are still nine games to go. We need to win every game to have a chance.”