Unfinished business

Rio Ferdinand was pleased to avoid the English sides in the Champions League quarter-final draw on Friday, and says United will be aiming to rectify defeat to FC Porto in 2004 when the teams meet next month.

“We've got unfinished business with Porto after they beat us at Old Trafford a few years ago,” Rio told ManUtd.com. “I'm excited about the game and looking forward to it.

“It's a decent draw. It's a bit of a cliche, but at this stage of the tournament whoever you play is going to be difficult. We’ll have to be on top of our game to get through.”

United are certainly in the more favourable half of the draw, with Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Liverpool and Chelsea all battling it out for a place in the final, where United, Porto, Arsenal or Villarreal will await them.

“I'm pleased to have avoided the English teams at this stage,” added Rio “Emotionally and physically it would have been draining – probably more than against a European team – because there's so much that goes along with playing English sides in this tournament. We know that firsthand from playing Chelsea last season.

“But we don't look too far ahead at the semi-finals. We're just focused on the quarter-final and won't be disrespecting Porto by looking at who we can play in the next round. We have to beat them first.”

Even before that, the Reds’ immediate task is getting over last Saturday’s 4-1 humbling at the hands of Liverpool. The wounds cut deep, but Ferdinand insists the result is behind the players and they’re focused on Saturday’s rare 15:00 GMT kick-off against Fulham.

“Saturday and Sunday were bad days,” he admits. “I've got a lot of friends who are Liverpool fans and I didn’t talk to them. It's out of our system now though, we've trained well this week and had four good solid days getting ready for Fulham.

“You don't ever want to lose to a team that are near you in the league, let alone your big rivals. You'd probably rather it happened against someone else, but that's part of playing football, you've got to take the rough with the smooth.”

United don’t take kindly to such defeats, so it’s a case of watch out Fulham. “We need to try and win every game we play,” adds Rio. “That's the way it is at this stage of the season. There's no time for saying we could afford to draw this game or that.

“Every game is different - the games we've played against Fulham will have no bearing on the one on Saturday. They'll come out and try to stop us playing and we've have to be able to deal with that.”

Rio was speaking to ManUtd.com, BBC Radio and PA Sport.