UTD Unscripted: My Old Trafford Tale
In my days coming through the youth team I used to play on the left wing more, so I’d be more comfortable there. A lot of the time I’d be playing against Denis Irwin playing at right-back and Gary Neville if he was playing. I’d be in the team that wasn’t starting. You can see it straight away because youth-team training is obviously a high standard at Manchester United, but once you go into the first team, the speed steps up, the aggression steps up. They train like they play, which is probably why they had so much success. It was quite an eye-opener compared to training with the youth team. You have to be on it every day, that’s for sure, and the standards are so high. It’s a steep learning curve that stands you in good stead if you’re someone like me, who didn’t really break through at United but still had the opportunity to go and have a career in the game.
It was such a whirlwind when I got in and around the squad that it never felt like I was competing with Giggsy and Becks, it was just a case of being so grateful for getting any opportunity and also just to see them play. They were, as I was growing up, two of my favourite players for the way they played and, even moving up to Manchester, I never thought I’d become a first-team regular but I knew it was such an opportunity to learn the game there. To be part of it, and to be even considered to be David Beckham’s understudy or Ryan Giggs’s understudy, was a huge honour. As a kid, I had to pinch myself. At that age, it was more about the opportunity of being around that. I was never of the opinion that Becks getting injured, might get me a bit of a run in the team, it was just: ‘get up every day, go train and if you get a chance, do the best that you can’.
From the whole squad, I took what it takes to be a professional footballer. You’ve got to be on it every day. Obviously I would look more at Giggs and Beckham, and what stood out most is the effort. You see them playing on telly and it just looks like it comes so naturally, but the amount of work they put in each day physically, and then the amount of extra technical work, it’s a real eye-opener of what it takes to be not only a footballer, but in their case world-class footballers.
Giggsy, the way he moved was just so smooth. He was like a Rolls Royce. You play against him and he takes that first touch away from you, but he’s so quick that you can’t get back to him. It was a joy to watch for all the fans on the telly, but when you’re on the same pitch as him, playing against him, you realise exactly how good he is and the majority of them are.
There are probably a few players in my career who I look back on and think ‘I didn’t like them at all’, but at Manchester United there wasn’t one. Incredible, humble people for what they were achieving and what they were doing every single day. If you weren’t on it in training, you get told in no uncertain terms, but off the pitch, you couldn’t ask to be made to feel any more welcome.
I had some good times in the first team, particularly in 2000/01, my second season in the senior squad, and the outstanding memories probably came against two of our biggest rivals at the time: scoring against Leeds and getting sent off against Liverpool.
