LUCKY FERGIE COUNTS HIS BLESSINGS
Anyone else see Carlos Buoffant stop the planned substitution just in time as Beckham stepped up to deliver the match-winning assist? On such things do championships turn. Well maybe…..
"I was going to bring Mikael off and he'd already had three chances to score. I'm glad he stayed on now and managed to get the fourth one.
"We've hobbled through the game and the players deserve great credit for the way they battled on. We've picked up some injuries and knocks, but we now have a ten-day break from the Premiership and the players will get the rest they deserve.
"This was a vital win for us and we're still in the race. We still need Arsenal to drop points, but if they do that and we carry on doing our job, it could make things very interesting.
"Our football was excellent at the start and when that happens you need to finish teams off. But Leeds deserve credit for the way they kept going.
"There was a lot of tiredness among our players after Sunday's Worthington Cup defeat, but it's a credit to their strength of character that they never gave up.
"I thought David Beckham in particular was fantastic for us. He was absolute class throughout the game.
"We had to hold our fort towards the end, but you expect that when you play Leeds."
Juan Sebastian Veron suffered an ankle injury, Silvestre limped off at the final whistle and midfielder Quinton Fortune sustained a groin strain. Keane is likely to miss the Champions League games against Deportivo La Coruna and Basel, along with the Premiership matches with Aston Villa and Fulham.
The Basel game looks like being a non-event:
"Fortunately the two European games don't matter in the sense that we have qualified but we just have to make sure that we don't do anything silly with team selection because of the other teams involved in our section.
"So I have to be fair to them but I think you will find next Wednesday that I will bring in some of the young ones.”
Rio Ferdinand:
"Performances at this stage of the season don't really count for anything. Three points is what we went out to get, especially after the Worthington Cup final, morale was a touch low and we managed to get the right result and cheer the fans up.
"They were saying in the dressing room afterwards that we should maybe have capitalised on the way we were playing in the first half. We only got the one goal and it's dangerous like that sometimes, but luckily we went on to win the game in the end.
"It's not difficult to go out because you love playing football and you want to do well for your team, but there are a lot of people, among the players the fans and the people to do with the club, who were disappointed after Sunday.
"But we have got to get on with it, we are still in competition for the Premiership, and the Champions League and we have to keep morale high and confidence as well.
"We just have to maintain our own form and get the results we want and hopefully something will happen in the other games.”
Terry Venables said:
"United are a great side but I think they may have left themselves too much to do. We're disappointed because we felt we did enough to get a draw. But if you fall asleep at crucial times you get punished.”
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