Time for other players to shine

Wayne Rooney over the past six-to-eight months has been prolific for us and his form has been outstanding, so it is a blow to lose him to injury. We never want to lose any player of his stature, particularly at this stage of the season, but it gives other players opportunities and we are always aware we can lose any player at any time.

If your success relies on just one player you won't be successful because that player can get injured, suspended or lose form. What happened last week is not something we can think too much about. As a squad, we have to be quite hard about it and focus on getting the fit players ready for the next game. I've been injured for long enough in the past and I know you can't do anything for the team when you're in the stands. We have to concentrate on our own jobs.

Going back to the 1999 Champions League final, we were missing Roy Keane and Paul Scholes, and last year we had Darren Fletcher missing in the Champions League final, so we have had players missing in crucial periods before. These are things we have to overcome; it's not going to be a bed of roses all through the season.

If you look at this season, we were missing almost all our defence at one point, but for most of the season we have had Rooney, Dimitar Berbatov and Michael Owen fit. It's only in the past few weeks that Owen and Rooney have gotten injured, but Berbatov is fit and is in great form. He is an outstanding talent and is a big presence up front, and I'm sure he will thrive on being the only senior recognised striker left.

Young Federico Macheda also has the opportunity to contribute now he is fit again. At the end of last season he provided us with inspirational moments that helped us to be successful and he has a chance to do it again. We know we have to contribute throughout the squad with goals now.

In a perfect world we'd have 23 players fit and firing every week, but it never works like that.

If you could guarantee that every player would be fit and on form every week we probably wouldn't need 23 players. Over a season we play perhaps 60 matches, and the demands of football in England due to the pace and lack of a winter break means that gone are the days when players could play every game. At most, a few footballers will play maybe 45 to 50. The rest will play between 30 and 40 matches.

All to play for

We were disappointed to lose the Champions League quarter-final first leg to Bayern Munich last Tuesday, but the great thing about this competition is that we have the chance to make amends on Wednesday.

Our away performances in Europe over the past 12 to 18 months have been far superior to that one. Sometimes when we haven't played well one of the great things for us is that we have still been able to churn out results. Last Tuesday I think we would have been happy with 1-1 considering how the game went, so to lose and in the last minute was really disappointing, as was getting Rooney injured.

I think it will be very different at Old Trafford in front of our own fans.

Since the game, people have pointed to our early goal and said we scored too early, but with our experience we know we can concede or score a goal in the first minute and we should be able to handle anything that happens. When we go into a Champions League quarter- final against a good team with a great history, we know we should be prepared for anything. Going 1-0 up in the first minute should have given us the impetus to go on and do better in the game. We had some chances to increase our lead in the first half and Nemanja Vidic hit the bar at the end with a great header, so even though we didn't play particularly well we can take confidence from the fact that we still created chances.

We have the away goal and 2-1 away from home in the Champions League is not the worst result in the world, although we're always disappointed to lose. So I think we go into the game on Wednesday with all to play for and both teams will be confident. Bayern will have gained confidence from last week and we have the confidence of playing at home and having a great record in Europe at Old Trafford.

I thought Bayern played quite well as a team last week, it wasn't just a case of one player doing well, and probably they went away pleased with their performance. We always knew they had good players and Bayern are a club that has been one of the best in Europe over the past 30 years on and off so we weren't expecting an easy game. Complacency wasn't an issue for us on the night, it was just that we didn't play to our best. I could point towards a similar situation against Manchester City in the Carling Cup semi-final earlier this season when we lost 2-1 in the first leg but got the result we needed in the second leg.

At the time of writing I do not know how our league game against Chelsea yesterday panned out, but we have no complaints about playing Chelsea in the middle of the Champions League tie. At the start of the season we knew that Chelsea in the league with six games to go would be one of the most important games of the season, and we also knew the Champions League quarter finals would be sandwiched either side. So this is not something that has just come upon us in the past week; it is something we have been expecting and it happens, season in season out.

I don't think Chelsea will look at going out of Europe as a positive. You can say they had a free week to prepare for yesterday's game, but we would much prefer to play a Champions League quarter-final. We are aware that success brings a congested fixture list towards the end of the season and that is what we want. We are not going to get to this stage and whinge about having too many games because we have been competing for three or four trophies for the past few years. The successful teams are usually the ones that have the most money and the biggest squads, and we believe we have a big enough and talented enough squad to cope with the fixtures. If we don't we will have to live with it.

Send you questions to Gary Neville to sunday@timesofmalta.com.