He went in with his shuds stowing.

I'd say Carrick has the qualities of a Scholes, Andrea Pirlo and Sergio Busquets.

Will any club dominate again? Are any club set up to dominate again? When you look at the clubs that have dominated they've usually got a core five, six or seven players who can stay there for 10 to 15 years. There is a continuity with the management. I'm not quite sure at the moment that I'm seeing the decision making at any of the top clubs to be able to suggest that domination is actually achievable again. Maybe in the future, but I'm not quite sure it'll happen very soon.

The rest of the Spice Girls wanted to invite the entire Bayern Munich team because they reckoned they'd never known blokes to be on top for 90 minutes and still come second.

Ryan Giggs will go down as the most successful British footballer of all time and I cannot see anyone ever overtaking him. He's on the brink of his 13th league title, after all.

One year's poor form remains a blip but if it happens next year, you can say it's a trend.

I would have been about seven years old when the formative years of my competitive football education began. I was playing in the local leagues around Manchester, playing against lads from tough areas who had been taught they had to fight for everything.