Gone too, of course, was the chance to lambast his critics in a show of rancour that could have surpassed easily anything seen in public life since Richard Milhous Nixon gained the White House six years after telling the fourth estate, "you won't have me to kick around any more."

Grant's immediate, and utterly unqualified, response to what must have been the most acute disappointment was to pour praise on Sir Alex Ferguson, the man who had denied him the sweetest of revenge on his many assailants.

This may have done little or nothing to further his defence against the argument, almost universally accepted until recently, that he was totally unqualified to walk, and still less talk, in the footsteps of his predecessor, Jose Mourinho.

However, it didn't do any harm to the contention that, if he isn't a better football manager, he may well be a better man.

Better, at least, in the matter of acknowledging that you have to entertain the possibility that occasionally the superior, more deserving team wins, even if it happens not be your own.

Mourinho's failure to do this was, those who still seek to deify him in his exile perhaps ought to get round to acknowledging, as a point of comparison, on a Biblical scale.

Generosity in defeat, we learnt on the admittedly relatively few occasions he was required to produce it, was for the Portuguese at least as arduous as an elephant's passage through the eye of a needle. He didn't bridle at defeat, he reconfigured it. It was a conspiracy. A rival manager visited a referee's room, he swore, and then he retracted the claim so casually he might have been complaining about Frank Rijkaard's dress sense. He refused, time and again, to accept that Liverpool had beaten Chelsea on the way to their Champions League victory of 2005. It was, on reflection, probably far easier to talk of Luis Garcia's phantom goal than his own lamentable tactics.

When he first arrived at Stamford Bridge he said, amusingly enough, that he didn't want to hear the invented scenarios of his inquisitors, he was starring in a movie of his own. It was a one-man show, of course, and if any frame suggested otherwise it went straight on to the cutting room floor.

This is only relevant when we consider the style of Grant's handling of an assignment that has come so close to extraordinary achievement – and one greater, if we are honest, than many would have wished for after considering the means by which he acquired his job.

Now it may yield an ultimately stunning success against United in next week's Champions League final and if it should happen our understanding of the vagaries of football, and precisely what goes into the management of a winning team, will surely be hugely enhanced.

Grant could not have been more generous in acknowledging the strengths of his conqueror Ferguson. He talked about the accumulating power of his work, the succession of great teams and great values, the willingness to let players play, the high store placed on character and the need to let it develop on its own terms.

As Grant spoke, it was intriguing to imagine what Ferguson might say of him if their roles happen to be reversed in the Luzhniki Stadium in a few days' time. Perhaps in the pain of defeat Fergie might do a little re-configuring of his own, but when the heat had passed he would surely salute an opponent who had at the very least held together a club that had been reeling under an attack on the fundamentals of success when he was promoted, to most people's minds, well beyond his station.

On occasion some of Grant's reaction to pressure has, it has been agreed, been somewhat bizarre. His monosyllabic performance after victory at Everton seemed to some a disturbing hint of psychological meltdown and when, a few weeks later, he prostrated himself on the Stamford Bridge turf in mourning for Holocaust victims some worried that his father's lifetime of grief was merging, uncomfortably and inappropriately, with the passing hurt of his own bad press.

All of that seems incidental now. Grant's brief opening of a window into some of his deepest feelings, and his dignified behaviour on a visit to Auschwitz, in the end told us more about a source of his perspective than any possible attempt to wrong foot his most dismissive critics.

They must now ponder the scale of their dismissal in the approach to the Champions League final. Though United did land their second straight title, and win just deserts for football that never flagged in its courage and ambition and commitment to attacking play, there can be little debate that until the weekend denouement Chelsea were unquestionably playing the more self-confident football.

Concerns about the fitness of Didier Drogba and John Terry, two hugely significant factors, in the growth of Chelsea towards the end of the season may well have shifted the balance more in United's favour, as did perhaps Sunday's evidence that Wayne Rooney is not only more than passably fit but also refired.

However, when Terry tells Grant he will make it to Moscow in fighting condition it is a statement guaranteed to bring reassurance to the manager. Terry's public profile is perhaps not a beacon of responsibility and self-control, but Grant has more reason than most to respect his professional weight.

Some remember that when Grant first took up his duties in place of Mourinho, and was relieved by a trouble-free 4-0 League Cup victory against Hull, Terry was the one player to embrace him after the game. At no stage since then has the Chelsea captain wavered from his belief that if the team were not to break apart they had to acknowledge Grant's role.

Indeed, again it was only Terry who spoke up on behalf of Grant after a place in the Moscow final had been won against Liverpool –and the Chelsea fans studiously avoided a vote of thanks to the embattled manager. Terry said that he couldn't believe that Grant's projected reward for delivering something beyond the means of Mourinho was the possibility of the sack. He shook his head and then looked up to the heavens.

But then, whatever the result in the Luzhniki, we are told that Grant could fall to the whim of his erstwhile friend Roman Abramovich. So be it, he appears to be saying, but in the meantime he will not live on his knees.

He will go to Moscow with at least an even chance of winning. It is no mean movie and who now can say he has only a bit part?

Those who cast Eriksson as City martyr are losing the plot

The great season of Sven Goran Eriksson's rehabilitation hasn't quite happened, though it is a point that has to be made somewhat cautiously here by someone who suggested that Manchester City's likely fate was relegation.

However, and this is true whatever you think of his owner Thaksin Shinawatra's right to own one of the country's most famous old clubs, the rush to cast Eriksson as some kind of football martyr is not so easy to join.

Most managers who paid out £8m sight unseen (at least in the flesh) on the dismal Roland Bianchi might feel a little queasy about their futures. Yet two years after taking the utterly untested Theo Walcott to a World Cup – "the most amazing decision in the history of the international game" said one football icon – Eriksson is apparently much less than overwhelmed by Benfica's offer of rather more than £1m a year.

No doubt Sunday's 8-1 defeat at Middlesbrough has done nothing to damage such conviction. The word is that he will probably wait for something better to come along. He is undoubtedly wise. Any manager who can survive the Walcott decision – and then pull off a double over the league champions – doesn't need telling that football, apart from being funny, can be as generous as it is forgiving. In all the circumstances, it would probably be best to leave it at that.

Ronaldo wrestling drags entire game through the mud

It is unquestionably true that the star of the season, Cristiano Ronaldo, at times behaved with wearisome petulance in Sunday's decisive Premier League game. Yet at least one occasion, when he threw up his arms in protest and provoked boos as noisy as the thunder, demanded serious review.

It should be conducted by those in authority who worry that arm-wrestling has become a staple of Premier League football.

Three times Ronaldo was grappled as he covered no more than 10 yards. In the end he stopped in anger and frustration. Many jeered, but all for the wrong reasons. It wasn't only Ronaldo who was being dragged down. It was just about the entire point of the game.