Cleverley's Silver Pining

Free of the injuries which curtailed a storming start to his 2011/12 campaign, Tom Cleverley is making his mark as a goalscoring tempo-setter in Manchester United's midfield...

Your recent strike at Upton Park put you on four for the season – do you have a goals target for this term?
I have a target in my head, yes, but I’m going to keep it to myself. Scoring goals is something that’s starting to come together in my game now. I’ve managed to do it out on loan and I was hoping it’d just be a matter of time before they came along for United. I was happy with the one at West Ham. I saw [Jussi] Jaaskelainen hurrying to the other side of his goal, so I put it inside the far post.

What did you think of United’s other goal in that game, scored by Robin van Persie?
I’m sure everyone appreciated how good it was, even if they did make it look easy. From a footballer’s point of view, the most impressive thing was that Robin was under pressure as well. It’s not like he had a free space to run into, the defender has stuck tight to him and he’s still managed to take the pass and finish it. It was world class.

It took a little while for you to get off the mark this season. Had it started to play on your mind?
Yeah, a little bit. I missed a couple of chances with England, too, but the main thing was I was in the right spot. I’ve worked hard on my finishing on the training field with Rene [Meulensteen], and now it’s starting to pay off. The work doesn’t stop here just because I’ve scored a few, though – I aim to get more.

You’re our top-scoring midfielder - on the same tally as defenders Evans and Evra…
I know! Four each. As long as we’re winning, that’s what matters. It can only help if goals are coming from all areas of the pitch. We’ve been good from set pieces this year and hopefully other players on the pitch can take a bit of pressure away from our strikers. It’s a team effort, we’ve got a really good team spirit here and we’re all in this together.

How would you assess the season so far from a personal perspective?
At the start of the season, the first thing I wanted was to be injury free. Including internationals and Olympics I’ve played more than 30 games already this season so that’s out of my mind, and that’s been nice. I’ve made more appearances for the club than I did in the whole of last season, but it’s only January and there’s still a long way to go. I want to get as many appearances as I can and hopefully help the team to win some silverware.

We’ve played our best football when our tempo has been high; does that suit your style of play?
Yeah, it does suit my game being box-to-box, high energy, and hopefully that can get the job done against teams. We have played some really good stuff when it’s fast, one-touch football. It suits me and hopefully I can help bring that to the team. I think especially at home, if we’ve got teams under a lot of pressure, they can struggle if we don’t give them a second to breathe. It doesn’t really play on my mind when I’m out there; I just play my own game and concentrate on winning.

For the young players, how valuable are the experiences of last season this time around?
They’re valuable. I don’t think we got complacent last year, it was maybe just a couple of bad performances or a lack of concentration, I don’t know. I’m just taking every game as it comes, but we definitely don’t want to feel how we felt at Sunderland last season, so it’s all about 100 per cent concentration and workrate in every game we’ve got.

What’s different about the team this year, as opposed to last year?
Obviously we’ve all got the experience of last year and so we know how hurt we were on the last day. We’ve got a couple of additions: Shinji, Robin, Alex and Nick, and they’ve all done well. There’s a great team spirit. There was last year, too, to be fair, but there’s a good feeling around the place which is fantastic and to me it just feels like a group of winners. Hopefully we can do it.

Is there a feeling around Carrington that this could be a special season?
I’m not thinking like that. Obviously I’m dreaming of it and I’m ambitious, but then again it’s only January. We’re just taking each game as it comes and working as hard as we possibly can.

This interview first appeared in the West Ham (FA Cup replay) edition of United Review