The Manchester Derby at the weekend had attracted the attention of football fans all over the world.
This was evident from the number of media reporters who had come to Carrington to attend the pre-match press conference.
There were more than half again as many as usual.
Clearly, after attending Manchester United's press conference, they could simply walk across to Man City's training ground and attend theirs. This had also been Ferguson's deliberate arrangement.
He had intentionally wanted to get ahead of Man City and put some pressure on them.
There were not many surprises in the team's eighteen-man squad.
In fact, considering the fatigue caused by the long flight to Romania for the Champions League group match in midweek, Ferguson's starting lineup was not particularly difficult to guess. There might be some differences, but there would not be any major problems.
Of course, Ferguson could not possibly directly tell anyone what his starting lineup and tactics would be.
Before the open question session began, Ferguson took the initiative to bring up the team's crushing defeat at Old Trafford last season.
That match had been hailed as the most painful defeat of his managerial career.
Ferguson understood the media very well. He knew this was a topic he could not avoid. Since he could not avoid it, he might as well bring it up himself and play down the media's hype surrounding last season's match as much as possible.
During the discussion, Ferguson used a certain amount of diplomatic wording. He did not say much about Man City's superiority, focusing instead on Manchester United's own mistakes. He even believed that United's mistakes had caused that crushing defeat, rather than Man City simply being too strong.
What kind of scenes had the media reporters not witnessed?
Ferguson's way of putting it