Manchester United defender Rio Ferdinand moved to explain how he wanted to prove Sir Alex Ferguson wrong near the end of his time at the club, but Ian Wright had other ideas.
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The former England international revealed how his former manager broke his confidence after criticising him in the aftermath of the club’s 6-1 defeat to Manchester City, by stating that he had “lost his electric yard of pace”, as reported by The Mirror.
Ferdinand insisted that his first thought was that he wanted to make the necessary adjustments to his game in order to adapt considering his diminishing attributes, with the aim of proving Ferguson wrong and continuing to play an important part of the club’s success.
“He said it publicly after the game we lost to City. My confidence went through the floor for a day or two, but then you sit there and say ‘what are you going to do? Sink or swim’,” he told host Gary Lineker on BT Sport.
“I wanted to fight. I thought I was still still good enough. I thought I had the ability to play, and so I got back to the drawing board and trained hard and worked on my game.
“That was the biggest thing, I wanted to prove him wrong.”
Wright, always one to lighten the mood, jokingly suggested that he agreed with Ferguson’s assessment as the panel all enjoyed the moment after Arsenal’s impressive 2-0 win over Bayern Munich in the Champions League on Tuesday night.
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