“It’s the best feeling, I have to say. Some of the best moments here that I’ve been lucky to be part of the game, you can dissect the performance and there’s pluses and there’s not. When you get a moment of the elation and the excitement like that, for me, there’s no better place in front of the Stretford End like that. It ends up meaning more. I think people leave here with more than just a United win today. It puts layers on top of that, the connection and the feeling, the emotion, it’s why we all love it so much and especially the supporters. So it goes a long way. There’s been plenty. The excitement, that’s part of this club. It’s not always the easiest way, we’d like to win games a little bit more comfortably than that. But certainly when they come along, it’s pretty special.”
Michael, you have played in a lot of games like that here that end dramatically and end with a late winner, I’m just wondering what it’s like to manage in one. How do the emotions differ being on the touchline compared to being on the pitch?
“Yeah slightly different, I think when you’re in the thick of it as a player, you’re right in the moment and you don’t always see the bigger picture. You’re a little bit different in terms of the attachment of the game. I was pretty calm all the way through, I was disappointed obviously, with the second goal, but I was aware that there was still eight minutes to go at that point, when they scored. If anything, I was thinking there’s a long time to go and we still had the players on the pitch at that point that could really make the difference for us. So I was still really positive that I thought we’d find a moment. Listen, it’s hard to hold your emotions together when the goal goes in like that so I think we all celebrated when that went in. But yeah, I did feel we’d have a moment, we tend to in them type of games, you always have a moment. It’s just whether you can take it. Ben certainly did that from Bruno [Fernandes]. It was great work down the right.”
You talked about being calm there. You do seem quite calm throughout the whole game. Is that important to you to project that to the players? Do you think they can feed off that as well?
“Listen, there’s times to be calm, there’s times to be emotional and there’s times to be angry, there’s times to be upset. That is part of the game and I think it can’t be underestimated that, you’ve got to bring that emotion at times. But, certainly that composure and that calmness for the players to be able to think clearly, it’s getting the balance. I think we’ve got the balance pretty well over the last three games of playing with that bit of fire and bit of hunger, but making good decisions as well. I’m not sure we all made good decisions when that goal went in, in terms of how we celebrated, but that’s what you strive for. That’s why we all love the game for moments like that. So when they do come, you’re going to make the most of them.”
