THE birds were singing, the sun shining and the flowers in full bloom.

The news had just come through that Alex Ferguson was retiring.

If this gives the impression that I wasn’t his biggest fan then I have written it right.

I once began a column on these pages with the words “I hate Manchester United”.

I was taken to task for it by a reader the next day, and rightly so, as I have realised with age that hate is too harsh a word where sport is concerned.

More accurate is that United have been under my skin for the last 40 years and I have an inherent natural instinct to reject anything associated with them.

Some call it bitterness, others jealousy; whatever it is there are millions of us afflicted by the condition and they will all know what I mean.

And at its core for me is Ferguson.

I don’t like the way he behaves, it’s as simple as that. The sarcastic put-downs of other clubs, the constant blaming of referees for defeats, the criticism of other teams’ players and managers.

Manchester City are dismissed as the “noisy neighbours”, Newcastle as “a wee (small) club in the North East”, David Luiz is a “dying swan”, Robin van Persie “could have been killed” by Swansea’s Ashley Williams.

He’s a great manager, no doubt about it, but let’s not forget that United have had a lot more money than anybody until Chelsea found richness a decade ago and City five years later.

Ferguson has won United the title half the years he has been in charge at United, but I can’t help wondering if the likes of Jose Mourinho and Roberto Mancini privately wonder why he didn’t win it more often when there was such a vast gulf between United’s spending power and the rest.

And are two European Cups enough for a team like Manchester United? Again, how many would Mourinho have won?

You cannot put down his achievements at United, but those are reasonable questions to ask.

He will be a legend with United fans, and rightly so. He did a marvellous job building them up from a low baseline and winning so much.

And maybe he was right to be rude and mean in the process.

By the same token I have the right to not like him for it.