It's time for yet another fascinating interview from the official site. This time it's Mike Phelan's turn to be in the not-so-hotseat.
The manager commented before the game in
"There are certain things in the team that excite you; the introduction of new and young players combined with the present crop who have the experience. You can see a good blend that’s forming. That is good for the supporters and it is good for Manchester United. You can see that these players have got very good qualities. It’s now a case of letting them mature in the right way."
What have the young players like Rooney and Ronaldo brought to training?
"They bring that youthful enthusiasm to training. It’s like a torch burning all the time. They come to training in the morning knowing that they’re going to kick a football around for a couple of hours. The confidence is there that they can see where their futures are going. They know that this is what they’re going to be doing for a long, long time and that they’ll have great moments in their careers. They’re not closed-up in their thinking in any way. They’re totally open to new ideas from the manager or from the coaches. How they interpret that is up to them."
They seem to have a bounding enthusiasm every time they see a football...
"That’s what they’re like. You see Wayne Rooney, he can’t wait to get the footballs out and he belts it around everywhere. Paul Scholes still does that. But there are also players that would never do that because they know their body would be at risk. Players prepare differently to others. There are situations when you’re young where you don’t have to be as rigid. All they need is sleep, a bit of rest between games and then they’re up again like young kids ready for the next test. The older and more experienced you get, that takes a little bit more nurturing to come out early in the day. Older players get to a point where they need to do specific things before they go into training."
Rooney and Ronaldo in particular have played at the very highest level, but are they still keen to learn and take information on board from the coaches?
"The impressive thing is that they take advice and information and then go and do something with it on the football field. You don’t want them to be clones, you don’t want to go down the route of saying ‘I told you to do it like this’. You want them to take in the information, but how they use that is determined by the type of player they are and the character they have. It works differently for different players and that’s the beauty of watching young talent blossom. Some young players will take information on board, mix it around and come up with something special, whereas other players will make progress brick-by-brick. Each player learns at a different speed."
Is that something that the manager still derives a lot of satisfaction from, seeing a young player develop?
"It’s always good to watch somebody start a long and fulfilling career and see it right through. Working with the players and them having taken on board your input and then blossoming into a player who reaches the goals he wants to reach, that’s a fantastic thing. But even that is changing all the time. There is a different aspect to developing young players nowadays because some of them have been bought for big transfer fees. You’re talking about £10m perhaps, or nearly £30m in