YOU can tell when a Premier League manager is feeling the stress of the job. They resort to picking arguments in press conferences and it sometimes gets quite petty and can lead to name-calling.

Former Leicester manager Nigel Pearson hit the headlines last season for calling one journalist an “ostrich” — for having his head in the sand all season and ignoring the “good” football the club had been playing.

While other managers aren’t as witty or metaphorical as Pearson, usually sticking with mundane insults such as “idiot” or “pathetic,” Louis van Gaal went one step further last week Wednesday.

Following Manchester United’s 3-3 draw with Newcastle, the Dutchman took exception to a Manchester Evening News reporter, who he accused of writing scathing attacks on captain Wayne Rooney.

The reporter denied the accusation, saying that he had in fact been pretty lenient on the striker who has played poorly for the large majority of the season.

Once the back-and-forth between the pair had ended, Van Gaal finished his media duties and made his way to the exit.

At this point, Sun journalist Neil Custis began laughing at the MEN reporter which irked Van Gaal further.

The United boss stopped at the door, turned to Custis and said: “You too fat man.”

It shocked those in attendance. Van Gaal had crossed a line. Journalists are used to being being abused on social media by people who clearly have nothing better to do than troll the internet.

Some have even come to accept that the odd manager, when in a bad mood, will comment on a particular report they disagreed with and call it “shit” or “wrong.”

But this was different. This was personal. Van Gaal had no need to call Custis fat.

Credit to Custis, he downplayed the issue and made a joke of it.

The following day the paper had a picture of the sports journalist on the front page in boxing gloves and challenged Van Gaal to a points v pounds contest.

For every point United won from now until the end of the season, Custis would lose the same amount in pounds.

Custis was present on Sunday Supplement last Sunday, in which he said the insult didn’t bother him. He acknowledged that he was indeed fat, that after going to the gym he would visit a pub which was “counter-productive” in his words.

He even defended Van Gaal and said that when a manager is under that kind of stress they can say things they don’t mean. But the other journalists around the table on Sunday morning disagreed and rightly so.

Custis had not attacked Van Gaal personally and his weight should never have been brought into the conversation. It was bullying and the United manager should have apologised.

Pearson did after he had called the reporter an ostrich. They made up the next time they saw each other and that was the end of it.

Custis and Van Gaal saw each other two days later, in United’s pre-Liverpool press conference on Friday afternoon.

There was no apology from the club or the manager.

No attempt to admit that the Sun reporter had been bullied by a man who is clearly under extreme pressure by the media and fans of the club.

Van Gaal acted in a despicable manner and he is lucky Custis was able to ignore the insult because other journalists might not have.

Imagine the journalist had been myself or Tashan Deniran-Alleyne and it had been a racist comment. Or it had been Suzanne Beishon and he had made a crude sexist remark.

There would be outrage and rightly so. Just because he didn’t comment on Custis’s skin colour or gender, doesn’t mean he should be allowed to escape some kind of punishment.

If any reporter had called Van Gaal fat, that journalist would in all likelihood be out of a job. He certainly wouldn’t be allowed at Carrington or Old Trafford again.

Journalists have been banned for a lot less by the club. Van Gaal demanded an apology from the media for saying he was going to be sacked and when he didn’t get one he walked out of the press conference.

Yet he couldn’t apologise to Custis for bullying him. Custis and the rest of the media at Friday’s press conference should have demanded an apology from the United manager and if he wasn’t forthcoming, they should have walked out in protest.

Not everyone will agree with what journalists write, especially when it portrays the club or a player in a negative light. Call them out on it.

Debate with them about what was written. While there is no need to call their work shit, it really doesn’t bother them.

There is a hate-hate relationship between managers and journalists, it goes back decades.

But there was always a certain level of respect between the two professions.

With Van Gaal’s comments on Wednesday, that was lost.

And until he apologises to Custis, it is hard to see the United manager commanding the respect of the English media he once had.

He doesn’t deserve it.