Reds Restored Belief

Old Trafford legend Arthur Albiston enthuses about the midweek win over Liverpool and the performances of players including Ryan Giggs and Chris Smalling...

Without being disrespectful to smaller Championship clubs we could have been drawn against in the Capital One Cup, Liverpool were exactly the team we needed to play after that poor result last weekend.

I think all the United players would hold their hands up and say 'we were awful' against Manchester City. But last night the players restored the belief of everybody walking out of the ground. Our supporters all went home happy after two or three days of doom and gloom.

It was a proper United-Liverpool game, certainly in the way it came to life in the second half. I said to someone before the game that playing under floodlights on a wet, drizzly pitch creates a special atmosphere - and especially against our biggest rivals, the team from the other end of the East Lancs Road. All our fans had wanted was a performance and they definitely got that.

Wayne Rooney was outstanding. He was probably one of the few players who came out of the Man City game at the weekend with a bit of credit. And what about Ryan Giggs? There was an incident in the ninety-third minute when he closed down Steven Gerrard and blocked a ball that was going forward, it came off Gerrard and went out for a throw-in. I've not seen Ryan Giggs do that for a long time - getting the crowd up on their feet. It brought a lump to my throat when I saw it. That shows you what beating Liverpool means to him, even at almost forty years of age. It's great that supporters see that because it shows them it means something to the players.

United had quite a bit of defending to do, against an almost full-blast Liverpool side, and there were a lot of tired players at the end of the match. Luis Suarez was always going to play, he can score a goal out of nothing and he lasted the whole game. David De Gea had to make an important save from Victor Moses. I think if Moses had misheaded it, he would have scored. I think he thought he was scoring anyway with that bullet header but De Gea made a great save.

Everyone played their part. Chris Smalling had a great game at centre-half. Sometimes players can be too tall to play at full-back and centre-half is definitely his best position, where he can get the ball down and give it to other players or clear it when he has to. Jonny Evans came off tired, Alexander Buttner was feeling his hamstring - people like them haven't played many games but some of them worked through the full ninety minutes and will be better for it.

After changing his line-up and beating Liverpool, David Moyes could have a selection headache against West Brom on Saturday. But he'd much rather have that sort of headache than the headache of facing the media after losing 4-1 last Sunday.

The manager knew a lot about Manchester United's players before he came here of course but he's finding out more as he continues to see them at close hand in training. And last night he saw some of them play their first match for a while and they all came through it well.

I see no reason why we can't build on last night's result. We've got a run of fixtures now where you could see us getting a few points. Everybody talked about the difficult start we had and it proved to be difficult. But a lot of teams are dropping points. Liverpool made a great start but then lost at home to Southampton last weekend, City have lost already to Cardiff, Chelsea have lost games that we didn't expect them to and we've lost games that maybe others didn't expect us to.

So it looks as if it's going to be one of those seasons when there could be a lot of teams involved. We weren't going to win or lose the league last Sunday; maybe if there were three games to go and we lost to Man City, it would cost us the league but we've got thirty-odd league games still to play.

If we can put last Sunday's result firmly behind us, we'll have a good chance of racking up some points in the month of October and getting back towards the top of the table.

Arthur Albiston was speaking to ManUtd.com's Adam Bostock.