IF Sir Alex Ferguson needed any reminding of the fickle nature of football supporters, he would have got it by tuning into MUTV immediately after Manchester United’s FA Cup demise on Sunday.

Ferguson is a man who has delivered 11 league titles – and currently aiming for a record fourth on the trot – five FA Cups and two Champions League triumphs in a period of unparalleled dominance.

This, lest anyone needed to know, followed a fallow period that brought three FA Cups in 16 years that also included the relegation to the old Second Division.

It has, quite rightly, made Ferguson bullet proof in managerial terms. The thought of United willingly getting rid of the 68-year-old to make way for Jose Mourinho, or anyone else for that matter, is impossible to conceive.

Yet the first caller on the MUTV post-match phone-in wanted exactly that, along with the sales of a dozen players deemed not worthy of United’s famous history, a history Ferguson has done so much to shape.

Now, it was easy to imagine this reaction as being some elaborate hoax, that the caller was sitting in front of his armchair wearing a blue and white Manchester City scarf making mischief ahead of tomorrow’s Carling Cup semifinal first-leg.

Yet it also emphasised just how difficult Ferguson’s job is in rapidly changing times across the whole football landscape.

‘‘I don’t know where he was coming from or how long he had been waiting to make the call but if he truly believes getting rid of the best manager Manchester United have had would help improve the situation, he is living in a different world to me,’’ said Lou Macari, a pundit on the phone-in.

‘‘The problem, and this is football’s problem, not just Manchester United, is that the players are just not there anymore.

‘‘In the past, United had guys like Steve Bruce, Roy Keane, Bryan Robson and Mark Hughes, who would literally go to war in order to win a football match. I don’t see many of those characters around now.

‘‘People talk about Wayne Rooney, and quite rightly so, but he sticks out like a sore thumb. The other guys did not stick out like a sore thumb.

They regarded it as part of their job.’’ Macari is reluctant to stick the boot in to United’s players, especially the young ones who still have plenty to learn and much development to do.

But, as a former manager himself, he can see a wider trend that he does not like.

‘‘Football is so big these days players get built up to be something they are not,’’ he said. ‘‘They are told how good they are, when actually they have achieved very little.

‘‘At Manchester United, there are three players who, for as long as they live, will be able to turn round, say they gave everything and put their medals on the table to show how good they were.

‘‘But how many Ryan Giggs’ are there? Or Paul Scholes’?

Or Gary Nevilles?

‘‘I see a lot of football, and I like to think I can spot a player.

But I could watch matches for two years and still might come up with anyone who is truly world class, other than the small handful we all know about.’’ It leaves Ferguson to massage a few egos over the next 48 hours to try and piece together a winning team for tomorrow’s tie.

The Scot might also be able to shed some light on the curious case of Nemanja Vidic, who pulled out of the loss having apparently suffered some unspecified problem in the warm-up that Ferguson seemed unaware of as he carried out his post-match interviews.

Roberto Mancini intends keeping the stampede of players wanting to join City at bay until after tomorrow’s game.

Mancini has had a little more than two weeks to assess the quality he has at his disposal.

Yet despite the widespread theory of City being a club overloaded with players, the Italian is scrambling around for an experienced team to tackle a United side badly wounded by Leeds.

It means new arrivals are virtually certain, with Patrick Vieira on the brink of a return to the Premier League and a reunion with Mancini, his former manager at Inter Milan.