A “war of words” - as we scribes like to tag it - between Darron Gibson and Giovanni Trapattoni threatened to end a successful international week on a sour note.
The player was under the impression that the Ireland manager had said he should leave Old Trafford to find regular first-team football, a notion the Derry man dismissed with the ill-advised and indelicate footballer's phrase, “he's having a laugh”.
I was at the press conference on Saturday when the manager spoke about the competing claims of Paul Green and Darron Gibson for a central midfield slot for Ireland and, even allowing for the Italian's ability to sow seeds of confusion with his slippery English, I certainly don't remember him explicitly calling on Gibson to pack his bags at Old Trafford.
However, the clear implication of what he did say was that Gibson could only improve his all-round game – and especially the more combative part of the midfielder's armoury - if he was playing regular first-team football.
In other words, Trapattoni didn't call on Gibson to leave but he left no-one in any doubt that warming the bench, even if it's one of those nice, cushioned ones in the Theatre of Dreams, wouldn't necessarily be doing the midfielder's international prospects any great favours.
Hopefully, Gibson's prickly response, as initially reported in the Derry Journal, won't complicate the situation for such an up-and-coming talent, and it's worth pointing out that, in the same interview, he also spoke of his good relations with his international boss.
And while we wait to see if Alex Ferguson thinks it's worth weighing in with his own observations - and that, as they say, could be a game-changer - my own hunch is that the whole episode will blow over, albeit probably not before the source of the problem is conveniently attributed to misrepresentation on the part of the dreaded meeja. Yep, when in doubt, blame us.
Anyway, as storms in a teacup go, the whole thing hardly amounts to a Gibsongate, let alone a lurid front-page shocker of Rooneyesque – or Terryesque or Crouchesque – proportions.
If the worst Trapattoni has to deal with as manager of Ireland is persistent questioning about how stylish midfielders like Gibson, Reid and Ireland might or might not fit into this scheme of things, then the veteran need only look across the water at the almost permanently haunted visage of his fellow countryman, Fabio Capello, to be reminded that the grass really is greener on his side.
