Mata: 6 Finals In December

Manchester United forward Juan Mata pens his latest weekly blog and looks ahead to an important month of football in December...

Hi everyone,

November was an important month in our calendar and it leaves a bittersweet taste - in the last 30 days we haven't been defeated, but the last two draws haven't been good for us, especially the one on Wednesday against PSV because we knew it was a game that we had to win. The score was not the one we wanted, which means that winning in Wolfsburg is almost the only valid result for us if we want to get through. It's not an easy task but we are confident that we can make it to the next stage. The Champions League is a very important competition for us and we want to remain in it.

That game in Germany will be one of the six 'finals' we are facing in a busy December. We're starting to see a Christmas atmosphere in the streets of Manchester and, in this country, that is a synonym of football and more football. The next game - therefore the most important one right now - is on Saturday against West Ham. They have had a good start this season and have won more games away than at home. However, as I said, we don't like draws and we want to go back to the victories. They have a very good manager and some of their players are very talented, but our aim is to get the three points and we have the whole week to work well on this game.

Things are very tight at the top of the table. It's not easy to defeat the teams who are up there, as we could see at Leicester last Saturday. They know the way they want to play and how to make the most of it. We believed we could win but at the end we only got one point, despite taking the initiative most of the time. Congratulations to Jamie Vardy for breaking the record of such a great player as Ruud van Nistelrooy - scoring in 11 consecutive league games deserves a lot of credit. Sadly his goal made us drop two points, otherwise we would be leading the table now. There's still a long way to go but if we want to fight for the Premier League title we have to win these kind of games.

Hugs,

Juan

Read Juan's latest blog in full at kicca.com/juanmata8.

Credit: Manutd.com