Manchester United tasted defeat last night for the first time since winning the Champions League and, while a 2-1 loss to Zenit St Petersburg in the Uefa Super Cup final is unlikely to leave any scars beyond another red card in Europe for Paul Scholes, it will increase Sir Alex Ferguson’s urgency in seeking to conclude the £28 million signing of Dimitar Berbatov from Tottenham Hotspur.

United are understood to have reached a verbal agreement with Tottenham over a satisfactory price for Berbatov, but the finer points of the deal have still to be concluded before the transfer window closes on Monday night.

From Tottenham’s viewpoint, the deal cannot proceed until they have secured the signings of Roman Pavlyuchenko, the Russia forward, from Spartak Moscow for £12 million and one other forward, but Dick Advocaat, the Zenit coach, suggested here last night that they had left it too late to sign Andrei Arshavin.

Regardless of any new arrivals at Tottenham — and of reported interest in him from Bayern Munich — Berbatov, who was seen bidding farewell to some of his team-mates at the club’s training ground yesterday, firmly expects to travel to Manchester with his agent, Emil Dantchev, over the next 48 hours to finalise his move to United.

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Berbatov’s prospects seemed to brighten yesterday when United cleared the decks — and vacated their No 9 shirt — by allowing Louis Saha, the oft-injured striker, to join Everton on an initial two-year contract, but Ferguson was non-committal on the Berbatov bid after his team’s defeat at the Stade Louis II.

“I can’t tell you any news on that because I have been with the team today and I don’t know what has gone on,” Ferguson said. “And that’s all I have to say.” United expect the Berbatov deal to be concluded imminently, but, while one Russian forward, Pavlyuchenko, was in London yesterday to tie up his £12.5 million move, Advocaat suggested that Tottenham had not offered enough to prise another, Arshavin, from Zenit. “It is quite simple: the board say that the deal is closed,” Advocaat said.

“They did not offer the £22 million that we want. They only offered £16 million and, with respect, Andrei Arshavin is worth more than £16 million.”

Ferguson conceded that Zenit, with Arshavin impressing as a half-time substitute, were good value for their victory in the Super Cup final on a ay that started badly for United — and indeed England — when Owen Hargreaves declared himself unfit with a worrying recurrence of tendinitis in his knee.

Hargreaves will not be considered for England’s World Cup qualifying matches against Andorra and Croatia and, while Fabio Capello will be alarmed by that, Ferguson sounded equally disappointed as he said that he had wanted the player to make his first appearance of the season and Zenit and that it is for Hargreaves, rather than the club’s medical staff, to resolve the situation.

It was a miserable night all round for United, with Wayne Rooney and Carlos Tévez again failing to get on the scoresheet in the absence of Cristiano Ronaldo through injury. Nemanja Vidic scored United’s goal in the 73rd minute, reducing the deficit after Pavel Pogrebnyak and Danny gave Zenit a 2-0 lead, and the English club’s hopes of forcing extra time were ended in the 90th minute when Scholes, who had already been booked, used his hand to punch the ball into the net in full view of Claus Bo Larsen, the referee.

The ensuing red card was his third in European competition in the past three years and carries an automatic one-match suspension, ruling him out of United’s opening Champions League match at home to Villarreal on September 16.

“It was an instinctive thing, but he had already been booked and so he had to go,” Ferguson said. “We understand that he misses the first European game because of that and that makes it more unfortunate.”