Mata Ready For 'Historic' Tie

Each week Juan Mata blogs on his website, offering insight into life as a first-teamer at United. This week, he’s looking forward to two away fixtures…

Hi everyone. Away goes what has been a different weekend, because we haven’t played, and today we start a new week with two games ahead. Both are away from home and both will require a good performance from us in order to be successful.

We are now in third spot in the Premier League after beating Burnley at Old Trafford, although this game showed that every team in this league, no matter where they stand on the table, can give you a tough time even in your own stadium. They had a really good first half, but we were able to win thanks to those two headers from [Chris] Smalling and Robin [van Persie]’s goal from the penalty spot.

That respect for our rivals must be the same tonight against Preston if we want to make it to the last eight of the FA Cup. All of us in the club are very aware of the good chance we have to achieve something great in this competition, and we will try to lift the trophy. But we must go step by step and focus only on this round.

I have been reading a bit about tonight’s rival and I have seen that Preston North End was one of the founder members of the English League, and they even got to win it without a single defeat. We play at Deepdale, which is considered one of the world’s oldest sites in professional football (the stadium was recently renovated).

It has been their home since 1875… Definitely this is a team who also brings that historic touch that I like about English football. However, they are not living in the past: they are in a good position in League One and I’m sure they want to add to their long history a great performance against Manchester United.

And next Saturday we will visit Swansea. They beat us in the opening week of the Premiership. I hope we win this time so we can keep third spot.