Rio Rules Out Retirement

Rio Ferdinand has insisted he will not be retiring at the end of the season as he hopes to stay on at Manchester United.

The 35-year-old returned to the side for the 4-0 success against Norwich City and produced a flawless display alongside Nemanja Vidic in Ryan Giggs' first game in charge.

By emphasising the fact that a trophyless season is not acceptable at Old Trafford, the defender is convinced the club will put things right in 2014/2015.

"I’m going to continue playing," he told reporters. "Whether it’s here, I don’t know. But I hope so.

"When you have been successful, you don't ever want to look on a negative perspective or from a negative viewpoint. You always look at it and think: 'What can we win and what do we want to win?'

"That will be no different next season, I am sure. Whoever is here, whoever is managing, the aim of this football club is to win trophies and we have done that consistently for the last 25 years. Long may that continue."

Interim boss Giggs clearly has the backing of his long-serving team-mate and there is a determination to end the campaign on a high.

"It is too short a time for us to notice any major changes," explained Ferdinand. "The sessions he [Giggs] has put on have been good and we have enjoyed them. It is always natural when there has been a change in the coaching or management team, invariably, that the intensity goes up because everyone wants to impress and everyone wants to play in the first game for the new manager. This here is a new chance and a new opportunity. That is no different now than what I have seen over the years with different teams and with England.

"Giggsy has got a big responsibility now and it is more important to look forward, with all of the lads getting behind him to make sure that we finish the season as well as possible, give the fans something to smile about and also give him the rewards that his career deserves and in his first dip into management.

"I haven’t looked at the league table for ages because it is embarrassing," Ferdinand conceded. "I don’t want to see where we are. That is down to us as players and we take responsibility for that as much as anyone else. We are where we are. We have to take some form of responsibility and we do. We are not shirkers, we are not people who don’t take responsibility. I don’t think you get to where many of us have got to in our careers and won what we have won without taking responsibility. This is no different."

Ferdinand will feel he should have played more often this season but does he think it has been the most difficult spell of his successful career?

"I don’t know," he replied. "It has been the most disappointing. That is a better way of saying it. We haven’t won games and we are used to winning, that is what we play for and that is what we go to training every day for, to prepare to win. We haven’t done that.

"You have got to accept some decisions that have to be made. Some managers play you and some managers don’t, everyone has got their personal preferences. That is football. Just as a whole, looking at it from a team perspective, we are not where we want to be so that is disappointing."