Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson won't back from branding his team's performance at Liverpool as "Conference" standard.

"The players should not be surprised about what I said," said Ferguson.

"It was a bad team performance.

"In most cases players know when they have had an off day. That was one of them.

"The fact is while Liverpool were the better team I could not actually see them scoring.

"But we gave them two gifts. The warning sign is there. If you are going to compete at the top level, you have to compete just as hard as Liverpool did on Saturday."