Not for the first time in his 22 years, five months as Manchester United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson pointed an accusatory finger at the media yesterday, but, rather than screaming about hate-driven conspiracies against his team, as he often has in the past, the Scot cited the eulogies to his so-called “Untouchables” as an unwelcome distraction that may have contributed to their recent wobble in the Barclays Premier League.

United drew much praise for the remarkable run of 11 consecutive wins that took them clear at the top of the table, while winning the Carling Cup and progressing in the FA Cup and Champions League, but Ferguson believes that the positive publicity may have had a negative effect on some of his younger players in the subsequent defeats by Liverpool and Fulham. He will urge them to put that right against Aston Villa tomorrow, irrespective of the absence of Nemanja Vidic, Paul Scholes and Wayne Rooney through suspension and Anderson and Dimitar Berbatov through injury.

“We've had quite a humdrum time since going to Japan for the World Club Cup, catching up the leaders and then having to listen to all the nonsense from you lads [the media] about how magnificent we are,” Ferguson said. “I'm trying to dampen things down, trying to dismiss all the talk about five trophies. The job is done for me by the Fulham result. What it has done is get rid of all that nonsense about us being untouchable and unbeatable. We've been done a favour. We're into a situation where we can concentrate on playing football and not reading newspapers. There has never been a game won in a paper yet.

“I said two weeks ago, everybody likes to read good things about themselves. It's a natural thing to do, so it can have an effect. There are a lot of young players in our dressing-room, so maybe it was a good time for us to get that defeat at Fulham in particular.”

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With so many key players missing, United will be desperate to return to winning ways against Villa, especially since by the time they kick off they may have been replaced by Liverpool at the top of the table. It is the first of two games in a little more than 48 hours for United, who take on Porto at Old Trafford in a Champions League quarter-final first leg on Tuesday evening.

That schedule represents a gamble on the part of Ferguson, who rejected an offer, from the Premier League and Sky television, to have the Villa game brought forward to lunchtime today because he was anxious about fatigue among his players after the international break. In particular he has concerns about Carlos Tévez, the Argentina forward, who returned to Manchester yesterday afternoon after a gruelling journey from a World Cup qualifying match in Bolivia - or Mars, as Ferguson called it.