funny stuff from the guardian fiver Not since Sir Alex Ferguson admitted he felt like "biting my tongue and choking on vomit" after the MU Rowdies lost to Liverpool following a debatable decision way back in 1988 has the Fiver seen him quite as puce with rage as he was earlier today when, after just one question, he stormed out of a press conference blasting Britain's "hateful" media. "They have a hatred of the MU Rowdies," fumed Fergie of the Fourth Estate. "It's always been there. I can understand it a little, but they go over the top." Yet even while denouncing all things mediaistic, the cunning knight recognised that journalists still have at least one good use - they make for ideal scapegoats when all other excuses have been exhausted And make no mistake, Fergie truly has exhausted all other excuses - this, after all, is the jester who once blamed a defeat to Southampton on the colour of his team's shirts; attributed the Rowdies' 1998 Big Cup beating by Borussia Dortmund to "some kind of sinister magic"; claimed United's Big Cup quarter-final draw against Real Madrid was rigged; and, most outlandishly of all, blamed his failure to win the 1992 Premiership on the club being unable to sign ... Mick Harford! So exactly how, according to the DevilBowl's supreme spinmeister, are a bunch of fat alcoholics with laptops contributing to the Rowdies' painful demise? "What they try to do is fragment the club, the players from the supporters and supporters from the players," railed Fergie, seemingly trying to convince the nation that a few critical articles - amid a sea of sycophantic gushing (yes you, Clive Tyldesley) - has done more to sway fans' minds than, say, dozens of diffident displays from a succession of donkeys and show-ponies signed and shoddily shepherded by, yes, Sir Fergie himself