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Giggs would be happy with the old-fashioned Double

The final insult for Manchester United came at the airport when a baggage problem delayed their flight from Milan by two hours. Sir Alex Ferguson and his players sat in near-silence as they reflected on a night when, to use Ryan Giggs's words, "we just did not perform".

It was 5am before some of the players got to bed and the next concern is how a gruelling evening, played in torrential rain, and the emotional side-effects of being so outplayed, might affect the team before tomorrow's derby at Manchester City. To Ferguson's intense irritation the game has been arranged for a 12.45pm kick-off, but the prize of victory is potentially enormous given United's five-point lead over Chelsea at the top of the league.

"In the nature of football," said Ferguson, "you always have to recover from disappointment and we will have to do it again. We have not had much from the Premier League but we will be ready."

Those thoughts were echoed by Giggs ahead of a weekend in which a United victory, combined with anything but a Chelsea win at Arsenal on Sunday, will see the Premiership trophy return to Old Trafford. "We still have a lot to play for," he said. "That's what we have to tell ourselves. We have to look forward to Saturday because it is a big game and we have to get ourselves up for it. Everyone is down: the staff, the players and the fans. But we still have a lot to go for. If we can get a positive result it will put us closer to the league and we also have the FA Cup final [against Chelsea] to look forward to as well. We are disappointed because we are greedy at this club and we wanted to win everything this year. But we have two other trophies to go for and if we can win them both it would be a great season."

Giggs was critical of the performance in Milan. "I don't think we froze. I just think we had a bad start and never recovered. Now we want to finish off the season on a high by winning the league and the cup."

Ferguson, meanwhile, revealed he was taking a long-term view when he opted for Nemanja Vidic of his returning centre-backs. Vidic had done some running as he recovered from the broken collarbone suffered on March 31 in contrast to the England defender Rio Ferdinand, who has been plagued by a groin problem for almost a month. "There was an element of risk but I couldn't play him and Rio, and the lesser risk, without question, was Vidic," he said. "Hopefully we now have Rio available for the rest of the season."