Sir Alex Ferguson has denied claims by Roberto Mancini that Manchester United have been lucky this year.

The Manchester City manager claimed last week that United have had a lot of luck this season.

Ferguson has rubbished the idea and insists that the 12-point gap at the top of the Premier League could be even more.

"He's lucky they are only 12 points behind," Ferguson told reporters. "Scoring late goals isn't lucky, we've only been doing it for 25 years."

The United boss went on to stress the importance of keeping their run going, comparing this season with the 1999 treble-winning campaign.

Ferguson continued: "The league games are even more important because we don't want to give our opponents and advantage.

"The similarities to 1999 are that our FA Cup run was a hard one and our European ties were really hard. The group stage was okay [this year] but we got Real Madrid straight up.

"In the FA Cup we've had only Premier League teams, which we also experience in 1999. I don't think the difficult games will be a problem."

Ferguson was speaking ahead of United's game against Norwich City, which kicks off at 3pm tomorrow.