We all accept that Sir Alex Ferguson's exceptional qualities as one of the top football managers in the world are unchallenged. He has the supreme inner confidence of a canny old pro, tactical vision and the ability to rule Old Trafford with an amalgam of intuition and fear.

He is also of course a congenital moaner. As he sits stony-faced on the touchline, there is always – even for a man of his envied reputation – something to complain about.

His apparent antagonism for referees is seldom compromised. He lets them know, in frequent public tirades, exactly what he thinks of them. The marvel is that many of the game's officials only tut-tut while he gets away with it.

On Sunday, when Manchester United played collectively without any evident sign of brio, to be beaten by Jermaine Beckford's goal for Leeds United in the FA Cup, he was left seething as he threatened to drop half or more of his pampered team. And he shifted his private post-match misery by attacking what he saw as the unreliable excesses of the referee's stopwatch. Later checks proved that the grimly garrulous United boss had got it wrong.

There have already been many memoirs and biographies published about him and doubtless others, just as numerous, are lined up for the time he chooses to give up (if he ever does). The choicest tales from Old Trafford's inner sanctum and dressing room are being kept under wraps.

As an individual, of course, he makes an absorbing study – this socialist millionaire who has methodically bridged the class divide and long ago rejected any lingering signs of deferential respect for powerful or puffed-up leading figures from soccer's hierarchy.

His affection for the game is steadfast, even if horse-racing and his genuine regard for handsome thoroughbreds on occasions come a close second. Maybe his pathological criticism of some referees allows him greater scope for one of his carping monologues than when directed at a trainer or jockey's faulty judgment.

Ferguson is a talented though, we assume, not easy man. Like many of his fellow managers, he has an ambivalent attitude towards the FA Cup. He knows, perhaps sadly, that it has lost some of its once starry appeal and glitter. More and more of the senior clubs appear additionally intent on the Champions Cup. The widespread coverage of the FA Cup on television doesn't seem to hold the same glamorous focus.

The tie between Wigan and Hull City at the weekend was never going to produce a crescendo of excitement, and on a bad day, too. Yet what are we to make of that shameful attendance of 5,335?

Old Trafford's phlegmatic manager often looks angry, sucking even more frantically on his visible stick of chewing gum. How frequently do we capture a smile? But maybe cup football is no laughing matter, certainly not when his illustrious players are knocked out in round three?

He has a tendency to cause a stir with his team selection. At times he – and other top managers – make wholesale changes, seemingly another disdainful gesture to the once cherished FA Cup. It could be equally argued that theoretically he is able to put out three elevens of comparable merit.

United came unstuck against Leeds. Dare we suggest, only partially tongue in cheek, that it was no bad thing for the game? There has been too much of a monopoly at the top end and even supposed secret talks about a breakaway movement, to join the best in Europe. It isn't just fanciful and it would surely tear our structure apart. Has too much gone already ?

Not ball-tampering again, is it? Guilty or not, one or two of the England bowlers appeared to show a disturbing lack of subtlety in what was proving to be so far an engrossing series.

What I like about cricket has nothing to do with seam-distorting. It's the way Test players suddenly get their life in perspective. Graeme Swann, extrovert allrounder, could get nothing wrong. Then inexplicably he dropped a sitter in the slips. Just as Shane Warne crucially did in the previous Ashes series for Australia. It's reassuring that the best are also fallible.