Ferguson: We deserved it

Sir Alex Ferguson was smiling as he left a sun-drenched Wembley Stadium having watched his side beat rivals Chelsea to win the Community Shield.

After Florent Malouda’s excellent strike had cancelled out Ryan Giggs’ equally well-manufactured goal, Ferguson watched as the penalty shoot-out became the Edwin van der Sar show.

The Dutch keeper saved consecutive penalties from Claudio Pizarro, Frank Lampard and Shaun Wright-Phillips to leave Wayne Rooney the job of scoring the winning spot-kick.

"We are happy with that," said Ferguson, who has been involved in 12 Community Shield matches. "We are always happy to win these types of matches.

"We have always used it as a stepping stone towards the first game of the season. We’ve got that, I’m pleased with it. It was a very warm day but it will bring players on to the required pace of the game."

Although Chelsea shaded the early possession, Petr Cech was the busier of the two goalkeepers and saves from Giggs and Cristiano Ronaldo meant the game needed a shoot-out to determine a winner.

"I don’t think there was much in it between either side, in possession terms in particular," added Ferguson. "But we did make the clearer chances and for that reason we probably deserved to win it."

Ferguson’s opposite number, Jose Mourinho, thought his team were unfortunate to leave Wembley empty-handed.

Starved of strikers – Didier Drogba, Andriy Shevchenko and Salomon Kalou were all injured – Mourinho’s three-pronged attack of Joe Cole, Malouda and Wright-Phillips huffed and puffed without really threatening van der Sar.

But Mourinho felt his side merited more.

"I think Chelsea didn’t deserve to lose," he said. "We controlled the game, not for ten or 15 or 20 minutes, we controlled the game for 90 minutes. No problems.

"When you lose on 90 minutes, normally the best team wins, or at least the team who has scored more goals."

Mourinho was quick to pay tribute to match-winner van der Sar.

"We have analysed the game with the penalties – I have to say they had an outstanding goalkeeper and we had three boys that played very, very well in my opinion, but couldn’t score a penalty."