There are loads of players I could name who are 16-16 looked like world beaters but then at 21-22 they are subs in non-league. There comes a time in your career when the pennies got to drop, where you've got to understand decisionmaking at the right, poignant moments in the game. When to pass, when to dribble, when to shoot. Game-changing moments, can you be the guy that sits there and takes the responsibility. And the great players do.

At times, European football can be very slow but it speeds up in the final third.

Most professional players are their own biggest critics. Some of the things you read in the papers that strike you as bang out of order will already have been thought by the players themselves

If I saw an ugly bird but she was a celebrity, she wouldn't attract me at all.

Football is the most important thing in my life, but I do have a life outside football and this is one part. The TV, the music, the fashion - it all goes to make up Rio Ferdinand.

It doesn't matter whether you're a senior or not, if something needs saying to a colleague it will be said.

Our club captain Gary Neville's been out for a year now, but Giggsy has taken up the mantelpiece.