Sir Alex Ferguson must try to lift Dimitar Berbatov after admitting the striker has been left devastated by his fluffed penalty.
Ferguson claims the £30.75million signing was very down in the dressing room at Wembley in the aftermath of Manchester United’s shoot-out defeat to Everton.
Angry United fans have turned on Berbatov because of his weak spot-kick and are making him the scapegoat for the club’s first FA Cup semi-final defeat since 1970.
Ferguson yesterday had to make a strong defence of the club’s record signing, insisting he is happy with the Bulgarian international and his languid style.
“He will be criticised for that because when you pay £30m for a player everyone thinks you should be able to score from a penalty kick,” he said. “But it’s just not as simple as that.
“I don’t see any evidence that he’s tailing off. He had his injury and missed a couple of games, but he came on and did well in the game.
“He did really well. He’s disappointed to miss a penalty, of course. He was upset, but it was a disappointed dressing room. You lose in a semi-final – and it’s the first we’ve lost – and that’s not easy to take. Anyone can lose on a penalty kick, I’ve lost many like Sunday.
“I don’t see it as a defining part of my career because anyone can win or lose them.”
Ferguson has come under fire for fielding such a weakened side against Everton and he made eight changes from the line-up who were so impressive against Porto.
He stands by his controversial team selection, claiming his priority is defending United’s Premier League and European crowns.
“I can understand that after Sunday there would be some criticism because it didn’t work for us, but I’m absolutely convinced I picked the right team,” he said. “I have no regrets about it at all.
“The way I looked at it is Everton’s season has been excellent. We’ve had two tough games against them in the league this season. We drew one each at Goodison and beat them with a penalty kick at Old Trafford.
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“That tells you in a given game against Everton, there’s little in it no matter what side I played.
“So I felt with the programme we have coming up – don’t get me wrong, we want to win everything – I took the realistic view that the priority has to be the league and the Champions League.
“That’s a plain fact of life. Also extra-time at Wembley is tough – we experienced that against Tottenham in the Carling Cup.”
Ferguson was also concerned what effects Wembley’s heavy surface would have on his players and was keen to preserve as many of them as possible for tomorrow’s crunch clash with Portsmouth at Old Trafford.
He felt the surface contributed to the dire spectacle and United have managed just one goal in 530 minutes of play at Wembley.
“That’s the issue with Wembley and there are very few games there with a lot of goals,” he said.
“Think about it. There are very few goals in the games and that from a spectator’s point of view when you spend that money is an issue.
“And I worried about that before Sunday’s game and I worried about it after the Tottenham one.
“I wanted to play the team I picked on Sunday and when I saw the state of the pitch on Saturday for the Chelsea-Arsenal match, that made my mind up that I’d definitely picked the right team.
“The issue for the FA is that it is used for other things and they take the pitch up, put another one down.
“Someone told me before the game on Saturday that they’ve had speedway or some kind of motorcycles on it.
“So if they are changing the pitch all the time, that makes it harder to bed it down and make it a true pitch.”
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