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Paul Jewell could be proud of his Derby County players for once after a plucky 1-0 defeat at home to Manchester United.
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- Report: Arsenal 1-1 Middlesbrough
- Derby County 0-1 Manchester United
- Sunderland 0-1 Chelsea
- Liverpool 2-1 Reading
- West Ham 2-1 Blackburn Rovers
- Portsmouth 2-0 Aston Villa
Derby County 0-1 Manchester United
Paul Jewell: “It would have been nice to have got something out of the game for the supporters but at least we can hold our heads high today. Next week we go to Middlesbrough and the atmosphere will be flat compared with today and we can’t let ourselves get sucked into that. There is no player of the year this year but if we did have on it would be the fans.”
Sir Alex Ferguson: “Everybody trusts [Cristiano Ronaldo] now, and what you have to admire about the boy is that his courage is beyond question. I don’t know how many fouls he has on him every game. Last week there were three in the first seven minutes, and seven in total, yet no-one was booked. So he has the courage to get up and get on with it.”
Sunderland 0-1 Chelsea
Avram Grant: “If there is even one in the club who does not believe, he should not be in football. I am positive and very optimistic by nature, but if I was in a situation where I did not believe, I would be looking for another job. The belief was here maybe from the second week I was here. We have shown there is a reason why we can believe in this.”
Roy Keane: “As Chelsea have done many times before, they are quite good at set-pieces, good delivery, big strong men attacking the ball. But the players’ reaction over the 90 minutes, performance-wise, I thought they were brilliant – but we lost the game 1-0. We have to play with that intensity and level of commitment to the club.”
Rafa Benitez: “We have seen before that [Javier] Mascherano is not bad on the edge of the box. He just needs to improve his accuracy and then he could score more goals. If other teams play deeper then he might have space and he can score. We have talked about this with him and he knows he can score from the edge of the box.”
Steve Coppell on Shane Long throwing his shirt to the ground: “He felt frustrated that he didn’t get one decision all afternoon, it was a one-way street. Shane felt he was banging his head against a brick wall but I don’t want to see the shirt throwing, Reading Football Club doesn’t like to see that kind of thing and it won’t happen again.”
West Ham 2-1 Blackburn Rovers
Alan Curbishley on Freddie Sears’s debut goal: “I scored in my second game and was taken home because John Lyall didn’t want me going back on the bus. It’s all change now, and Freddie will probably jump in a ‘Hummer’. He’s got a debut to dream about. Someone said the drinks are on him, but I’m not sure if he can get in the pub.”
Mark Hughes: “We didn’t seem in danger, without reaching a decent level ourselves. Maybe there wasn’t enough drive in our game to see it out and win it. As the away side, you know the home team will put you under pressure – and they capitalised on poor play from us. We seem to be the right team at the right time for West Ham – we’ve done it again for them.”
Portsmouth 2-0 Aston Villa
Harry Redknapp: “It was a great finish by [Jermain] Defoe, terrific skill, and that’s three big victories this week. We’ve gone above Villa into sixth place now but Everton are the team to catch for fifth and we’ll keep trying. It has been a terrific week for us and we did well again because Villa set us a lot of problems, particularly from set-pieces.”
Martin O’Neill: “If this is what happens when Fabio Capello comes to watch then I must think about asking him not to. It has been a poor couple of days for us in terms of results but I felt we were capable of winning today – even when we were 2-0 down at half time. Luck deserted us but it’s all about winning games and we’ve got to get back to that. We had a lot of possession and created a number of chances. Gabby is disappointed with his miss but we missed others as well.”
