Essential player
“This club is all about breaking records and achieving a new status. To be the most successful team in the English game would mean everything to the club and to the fans especially. They loved it when we equalled Liverpool’s record, so to beat it would mean an awful lot to them. As players, we want to put right the disappointment of not winning the league last year.”
Mature
Fletcher went on to reiterate the importance of the more mature players such as the duo in their mid-thirties, Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs,
“The senior players have been in so many situations, such as winning the league and then not winning it, and they know what you need to do to get it back. They know what it takes to fly back from a Champions League game and then play at Everton at noon on Saturday. They pass on the advice and the likes of myself, John O’Shea, Wes Brown and Wayne Rooney learn from it. Then it’s up to all of us to pass that on to the younger players.”
Fletcher says that the injuries United suffered last season were a main reason for their failure to pick up the title. He particularly referred to a period where he and fellow midfielder Michael Carrick had to play in the back four,
“Me and Michael played three games in central defence. I’d have liked to have seen the result if Chelsea had to play with Lampard and Ballack there. We had to experience that and it wasn’t great. It was detrimental to our season, no doubt about it. We had a fantastic squad but even that couldn’t cope with the amount of injuries we had.”
Flopped
Fletcher also had a word for striker Wayne Rooney who had a fantastic goal scoring record at United last season but then flopped at the World Cup with England,
“People are going to look at Wayne and expect the same as last time. He demands such high standards of himself that he’ll expect to go out and do just that.”
At the age of twenty-six, Fletcher has transformed himself from a bit part player into an essential part of the Manchester United jigsaw. He played thirty league games for the first time in his career last season and he is also now captain of the Scotland national team.
On the field he is a fine player. I wonder if he is right with what he is now saying off the field?
Is he right? Will United break Liverpool’s record this season?
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