As the first snippets of Fergie's autobiography were revealed it was clear he had a lot of dirt to dish and it wasn't long before Liverpool got a mention. In fact it turned out the Anfield club got more than a mention – the 71-year-old had devoted a whole chapter of his life story to getting his feelings about Liverpool off his chest.
Did we really get to him that much?
Fergie has had a problem with Liverpool for years. It probably dates back to 1980 when he saw his Aberdeen side humbled by Bob Paisley's all-conquering side. He spent most of his 26 years as Manchester United manager trying to knock Liverpool off "that perch", eventually overtaking Liverpool on league titles but never managing to match the three European Cups Bob Paisley won in just nine years as Anfield boss.
If the book is anything like his outpourings down the years it'll be full of contradictions and one jumped out straight away. About Liverpool.
He claims not to be over impressed by Liverpool and England captain Steven Gerrard, who incidentally overtook Bobby Charlton last week on England caps, writing: "I'm one of the few who felt Gerrard was not a top, top player. When Scholes and Keane were in our team Gerrard seldom had a kick against us."
Yet despite not rating him, despite claiming he rarely got a look in against his own midfielders, he also claims he tried to sign him. "We made a show of him in the transfer market, as did Chelsea," he writes, "because the vibe was that he wanted to move from Anfield."
The year Chelsea came close to signing Gerrard was the year Roy Keane left Old Trafford after a dispute with Fergie. Yet Fergie had been already been trying to replace him with a player he didn't think was particularly good. And given that Chelsea had a £32m bid turned down it seems he was prepared to pay a lot of money for a player he didn't think was particularly good.
Maybe Fergie is talking Gerrard down to ease the pain of being knocked back by him. Speaking of that move for Gerrard he says: "There seemed to be some restraining influence from people outside the club and it reached a dead end."
Restraining influence? What on earth could it be that stopped a lifelong Liverpool supporter, a Huyton lad, from making the switch to the old enemy?
That bid from Chelsea came weeks after Liverpool had won the Champions League under Rafa Benítez, a victory that must have stuck in Fergie's throat. Liverpool had now won it five times and it might just be the kick Liverpool needed to get back to their old ways again.
Four years later and Liverpool had one of the rare seasons during Ferguson's Old Trafford reign where they actually looked capable of putting a decent title challenge in. Most of the time Ferguson was in charge at Old Trafford Liverpool were their own worst enemy, problems off the field as big an issue as problems on it.
In 2009, despite those off-field problems starting to bite, Liverpool weren't doing too badly in the league. In the January it was too early to say how Liverpool might cope with the pressure as the season went on, but it didn't stop Ferguson mentioning it.
Rafa responded with what became known as his "rant" , calmly reading out "fact" after "fact" about Alex Ferguson in his weekly press conference.
As well as making comments about Liverpool, Fergie had seemed to suggest the Premier League had fixed the fixture list to handicap Manchester United: "I've been saying this for a few months," Fergie announced, "but our programme didn't do us any favours and I think we have been handicapped by the Premier League in the fixture list."
The conspiracy theory went on: "They tell me it's not planned. I've got my doubts. I'm not saying what they do down there, but next year we will be sending somebody to see how it happens, I can assure you. I just don't understand how you can get the fixtures like that."
Rafa took exception to that on two counts. First of all, he didn't actually think Manchester United's fixtures were any worse than Liverpool's and secondly, he didn't think any other manager could get away with making that kind of accusation. To Rafa – and let's face it, he wasn't alone in his thinking – it seemed that Fergie and his club got preferential treatment.
The "rant" was a list of examples of where the fixture list had been kinder to Manchester United than to other clubs along with occasions where Rafa thought Fergie had got away with making comments about officialdom. He wondered if other managers would get away with making those comments, especially in light of the so-called "Respect" campaign.
Had Rafa memorised the "facts" rather than reading them from a piece of paper, had he not listed quite so many, it might have been perceived differently, but Rafa was always going to be an easier target. The line the media took, straight away, was to ridicule Rafa for his "rant" rather than question Fergie about the contents of it.
The media were always wary of questioning Fergie – if they stood up to him or asked him difficult questions there was every chance they'd be banned from ever asking him questions again. Manchester United is a product that sells papers and boosts ratings and outlets are always going to be wary about losing the access to that. They aren't going to kill the goose for one golden egg. Fergie knew this and it gave him an element of control over the media.
Other snippets from his book show just how important it was to Fergie to have control of all the relationships he had in the game, not just with the media, yet it's Rafa who he brands as the "control freak", saying he had the Spaniard's card marked before he arrived at Anfield: "The advanced publicity was that Benitez was a control freak, which turned out to be correct."
Rafa was one of the few who stood up to Ferguson and Ferguson says that was a bad move.
"The mistake he made was to turn our rivalry personal," he writes, like he's a mob boss talking about some kind of turf war. "All I said in reply was that Rafa was obviously bitter about something. That was me saying to him: look, you're a silly man. You should never make it personal."
Fergie would eventually call in some favours. "Once you made it personal, you had no chance because I could wait," he writes. He did wait, and a few months later he had the chance to try and get some revenge.
By the middle of April Liverpool were looking a serious threat to Manchester United's league hopes so Fergie and his old mate Big Sam launched what looked a co-ordinated attack on Benítez.
The hurt look on Allardyce's face as he complained about a hand gesture Rafa had made during the 4-0 win over his Blackburn side, and at also being snubbed by Benítez for a post-match drink, is one of those comedy moments that sticks with you a long time. Fergie's synchronised backing of his old mate Sam, saying Rafa went "beyond the pale" with the gesture, adding in some sympathy for Everton for good measure, made it comedy gold.
They didn't sound like mob bosses, they sounded like schoolkids who'd lost a game of conkers.
Liverpool, of course, didn't win the league in the end and when events off the field finally started to take their toll over the summer they weren't going to be challenging again for a while. Maybe Fergie got lucky, we'll never know.
What we do know is that Rafa really got to Fergie – and judging this book on the snippets we've seen so far it looks like Fergie never got over it.
In one interview about the book he said he'd only really missed one day in the job since he packed in. That was the defeat by Liverpool, when he said he was "kicking every ball."
Liverpool got to Fergie – and despite his success it seems he's never quite got over it.
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