Video: Kelly Cates Caught Up in Running Fued Between Ferguson and Dalglish
Kenny Dalglish and Sir Alex FergusonOn a night when the young and old combined to shine for Manchester United in the Champions League, it was off-the-pitch matters that stole the headlines.

Forget Anders Lindegaard, in for big-money summer signing David De Gea, and his eye-catching performance in Benfica in the Manchester United goal.

Move over Ryan Giggs, who banished any thoughts of his retirement being accelerated by the young guns with his record-breaking strike in the 1-1 draw.

No, it was Sir Alex Ferguson's spat with ITV's Kelly Cates – the daughter of Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish – that left most people talking.
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Ferguson revealed his exasperation with the persistent spotlight on De Gea's shaky start to life at Old Trafford by accusing Cates of "looking for stupid little things" by asking whether Lindegaard's performance left him with a selection dilemma.

He said: "David de Gea will play on Sunday against Chelsea.

"That was the understanding we had before the game, and it doesn't change.

"I don't know why you ask these questions, you're just looking for stupid little things."

Ferguson's withering reply to Cates would certainly not have gone done well in the Dalglish household.

Yet Cates, in her guise as innocent bystander as post-match interviewer, was always asking for trouble given the history between Ferguson and Dalglish, who are no strangers to engaging in battles in the dugout and running feuds in the media.

While many talk about the rivalry that has developed in recent years between Arsene Wenger and Ferguson, the first great spat of the modern era centred around Dalglish and his fellow Scot from the other end of the M62.

Ferguson, infamously, made it his mission to "knock Liverpool from their perch" when he first crossed the border in 1986.

It was also 23 years ago that Ferguson complained of managers leaving Anfield "choking on their own vomit", prompting Dalglish to reply reporters would get more sense out of his then six-week-old daughter Lauren than from Ferguson.

It goes on and on.

Cates, then Kelly Dalglish, was a Setanta pitch side reporter in 2008 when she told Ferguson she wanted to ask him about a Christmas party that led to the arrest of a player over unfounded rape allegations.

Ferguson swiftly declined – and probably hasn't forgotten as he proved when he snapped and put Cates in her place in Portugal.

Of course Cates hasn't become the first, and certainly won't be the last, journalist to fall foul of the notoriously prickly Manchester United manager when daring to ask a question.

But you just wonder whether the fact that it was his old foe's daughter quizzing him, rather than somebody else, that saw poor Cates caught up right in the middle of a row that began not long after the 35-year-old was even born.