I won't be broken by Fergie snub

Those two small factors aside, then, the resemblance is . . . still not entirely obvious. But if, on paper, Bosnich sounds like some phoney running for Congress, face-to-face he puts this stuff over as absolutely genuine. It helps that he is vastly brighter than the average footballer.

Watching him talk, it is not hard to see how a younger Bosnich - he is now 29 - would have been vastly impressed with himself. Aside from the brain, the glam career and the lorryloads of bread, he is not repellent to look at. It would take an unusual chap not to be seduced by his own wonderfulness, and some feel Bosnich succumbed.

Yet even his seven years at Aston Villa produced two League Cup victories.

What followed at United was the best and worst of times. His colourful second marriage became a train wreck from which he is only now emerging.

Professionally he lurched from glory in the 1999 World Club Championship to being dumped in the reserves. Ferguson then spent a long time telling Bosnich to get lost.

"Not to my face," corrected Bosnich helpfully. "Always through a third party. I refused to be demeaned by it. I'm stubborn. Take from me and I'll take back from you with interest." His clever revenge, then, is that he refuses to look back in anger on his time at Old Trafford.

"It was a fantastic learning experience in the most difficult of circumstances," he explained. "It didn't matter to some people if I played fantastic or bad. There are things I just can't talk about concerning Man United. But my ambition was to win trophies and I won two there.

"Those are very dear to me. I also gained some great friendships with quite a few players, and I learned more about myself than if my career had continued on a steady upward path. I have no negative feelings towards the club at all."

And so to Chelsea, where the sunlit uplands promptly eluded him again. Yet come at last the great day when Bosnich got his chance, he displayed confidence as baffling as it was justified. How?

"There is a great deal of selfdenial in sport," he conceded. "Everybody starts the game with fear. Cus D'Amato told Mike Tyson about the coward and the hero - D'Amato said the two guys feel the same, but it's what the hero does that makes him the hero. You can use your fear like fire, not to burn you but to warm you. I had a rough period at Chelsea. After the hernia last season, I did expect to start this season in goal and I was disappointed not to. During my marriage when football was my only happiness that might have been a disaster. The marriage was a mistake.

"Now it's ended and soon the divorce will be through. I've got a fantastic bunch of mates in London, a surrogate family. Being so much happier has allowed me to produce my best form. I've learned not to play for anyone's sake but my own, the team's and the manager's. Being selected for the next game is the only praise I need, although Claudio Ranieri told me not to get too high and if things went wrong, not to get too low."

That sounds like a motto Ranieri could use himself at present, with the misguided speculation that he offered to resign when his team was booed off the pitch after the draw against Blackburn last weekend. But Bosnich respects him.

"His way is different, very calm and serene. There's no problem getting his message across. A manager needs to be able to sell himself to his players. If they don't believe in him as the top man, he has no chance.

"This is the most important quality, and he has it. Results have pointed in another direction but everyone deserves time.

"I don't know why it's not happening. Not fulfilling your potential as players is wasteful, the worst crime. We've drawn too many games, and we've given away the lead. But we're not far off. The Premiership is the toughest league on earth."

And it remains the prize which matters. Bosnich agrees it would be no use if Chelsea won every cup around if they also failed to make next season's Champions League.

"Making the UEFA Cup would be a pyrrhic victory. With the players we have and the money the chairman has spent, we have to produce a return on that investment. Yes, we can do it. We're not halfway through the season yet.

The real competition starts in January. Then we'll see."

For tomorrow's match at Old Trafford, meanwhile, Chelsea will be without Marcel Desailly (Achilles problem) and Emmanuel Petit (knee injury).

Man United v Chelsea
12 noon, tomorrow, Old Trafford
(Live on Sky Sports 1 & Sky Sport Extra)

There's no substitute for a settled side
The David Mellor column