Fergie is a wonderful man and a brilliant manager who has forgotten more about football than most will ever know, but what on earth was he talking about?He bounded into his little office, where he entertains friends and family after a game, shook me by the hand and beamed "you were lucky it wasn't ten".
He claimed to have witnessed "a dozen or more" chances for his Manchester United team - this in a match where Burnley dominated for long periods and the stats show we had one fewer shot on target. As my protestations unfolded, I realised he was only half-bantering, that he felt we were too open at the back, and if his strikers had been firing properly, we could have been in real trouble.
It shows the one-eyed wonder we all possess. If only we had taken all our really good chances, we would have won 4-3 and become the first promoted club to do the double on reigning champions.
The best two unconverted chances, one in each half, fell to us.
This was not a 3-0 match, even if that was the final scoreline. To be fair, finally, the United manager did concede that over still water and spicy chicken. He acknowledged that if David Nugent had put away our best chance of the second half, when Chris Eagles put him through after a brilliant run, United might have struggled to get back into the game. Well he said he thought that anyway. Those thoughts are always easier with the win under your belt. He thought we were very good going forward, was very complimentary about Graham Alexander's passing, Wade Elliott's trickery and Eagles' runs. He clearly rates Tyrone Mears, admired the way Nugent kept tracking back - at times he was like a third centre half - and thought David Edgar did well considering it was his first start.
Before Fergie had arrived, I bumped into Brian Laws on his way to do the media.
He was looking pretty relaxed and is clearly happy with the attitude of the players. He reckons there were an awful lot of positives for us to take out of the game.
So will we stay up? The spirit is certainly there.
Over in the away end, it felt like the season was starting all over again. New manager. Players pumped up. Fans more pumped up than I have seen them since Wembley and promotion.
Our first home game of the season was Manchester United, and as any football fan knows we beat them 1-0 thanks to a Robbie Blake strike I have now seen dozens of times and will see hundreds more.
United away is a tough opener for the second new season of the year, but there was a feeling in the air that we might get something out of it. United have not been great of late and if ever there was a time and a stage for our boys to turn it on, this was it.
Laws got a warm welcome as he walked beyond the dugout towards the away end just before 3pm. Lots of the fans feel that after the mild cult of personality surrounding Owen Coyle, and the sense of betrayal felt when he upped and left with a sideways move to Bolton, a bit of solid Lawsery might be what we need.
I know a bit about the processes that led to our former right back getting the job. Some of the obvious names fans were suggesting, like Alan Curbishley and Steve Coppell, were non-starters for various reasons. Darren Ferguson was fancied by some but had already committed to Preston. Paul Jewell seemed to write us off on Sky Sports last Saturday. I had a cheeky go at getting Harry Redknapp to sound out Slaven Bilic, since Croatia failed to qualify for the World Cup, but that went nowhere.
Burnley chairman Barry Kilby and fellow board member Brendan Flood - the team that landed Coyle - did a very hard-headed analysis of the results-v-budget record of the various contenders finally left in the frame, especially Laws, Doncaster's Shaun O'Driscoll and Simon Grayson of Leeds. Grayson was probably off limits anyway as it would doubtless have required a fight with Ken Bates to get him out, which is the last thing you need a few days before a trip to Old Trafford. Laws nicked it on experience and local connections. The players seem happy enough and the fans are thrilled that Graham Alexander is now part of the coaching team.
I should say that Ferguson and Redknapp were a huge help, as they always are to smaller clubs going through tricky times, in providing analysis and intelligence as the board moved quickly to fill the gap. They both reckon that Laws will do a job as the saying goes.
He certainly seemed to have got the players geed up for it. We did not sit back, but instead went out to create chances, and had the best of the half, when Steven Fletcher fired wide from just inside the box with Burnley 3-on-1 in the United final third. As someone said on Match of the Day last night, how often do you see that?
Other than a few headers wide, and a good shot from Nani, they never looked like troubling Brian Jensen in goal. They started to get frustrated and both Antonio Valencia and Paul Scholes were lucky not to see a yellow card.
Nil-nil at half-time did not flatter us and in the opening stages of the second half we looked more like the home team than United. I was always worried they would cut us open though, and eventually they did. Dimitar Berbatov, whose first touch is mesmerising, took his chance well, as did an otherwise off-colour Wayne Rooney a few minutes later.
Even at 2-0 down we kept playing good football and we kept pressing for a goal, all the time wondering what might have been had Nugent done what nine times out of ten he would have done with that second half-chance. Why did he use the outside of the boot? Why can we never go back in time?
With five minutes to go, Steve Thompson, who caused them a lot of trouble after coming on for the fouled then injured Fletcher, hit the post with a header.
I tweeted at the end that with players like ours, and fans like ours, we really ought to stay up. The fans were great. Three thousand of us to 72,000 of them but other than when the goals went in, all the noise was coming from Burnley supporters. One or two songs about Coyle, some with his name changed to Susan Boyle. Not many though. We will save those for Bolton away a week on Tuesday.
But Laws must have loved the welcome he got when he walked to the away end pre kick-off and the players will surely have appreciated the volume of the support to the end of the match and beyond.
Some good humour too. "You're not Robbie Blake" is the one we sing at strikers who try ambitious shots and miss. Both Rooney and Berbatov copped that one. But a good variant was thrown at United mascot Fred The Red. "You're not Bertie, you're not Bertie, you're not Bertie Bee (the Burnley mascot)".
The Glazers situation provided some good ones too. In addition to the traditional "U-S-A" that away fans like to sing, we had "where's your money gone?" and tenner-waving "we've got more cash than you". And how nice it must have been for our chairman, when so many of them are so unpopular, to hear that there was "only one Barry Kilby".
Even as the players walked off at the end, the Burnley fans were still shouting for "Brian Laws's claret and blue army" and by then departing United fans were applauding the travelling support.
So still no away win to our name. Next up is Bolton at the Reebok. That could be the game of the season. And if we play like we did at Old Trafford, we can do it.
Fergie was a bit non-commital about whether he thinks we will stay up. But he wants us to, and he wants us to beat Bolton too. About a hundredth as much as I do. But every little helps.
