Javier Hernández and Antonio Valencia have been speaking to Gemma Thompson at manutd.com about the coming season & campaign to get Manchester United’s 20th league title.
Antonio Valencia was Manchester United’s fans and players player of the year for the 2011 / 2012 season & rightly so, had a fantastic season after being fully recovered from his broken ankle which he suffered against Rangers in the Champions League back in 2010.
When speaking to the Official site Valencia had this to say regarding pre-season and the season ahead:
“Training for the new season has been going very well. We trained hard in South Africa and China and it was good to play some games. It’s been five years since I had a full pre-season so it’s fantastic to be getting this opportunity. It’s gone well and more than anything I’m pleased not have picked up any injuries.
“I’m excited to be wearing the no.7 shirt in the coming season. It’s a number I really respect because so many great players have worn the shirt and made history for Manchester United in it. Now I hope I can write my own. It’s a new adventure but it’s something that I’m very relaxed about and also humbled by.
“All the players are feeling good about the new season. There is a great team spirit amongst everyone. I love being part of this team – I have some good friends here and I laugh a lot with guys like Evra, Nani, Anderson, Bebe and Chicharito, but everybody in the group has a laugh together. When we have to work, we take things seriously. When the time is right to enjoy ourselves, we do that too.
“We are all looking forward to the new campaign. On a personal level, I want to be involved in every game, but to be honest I think more from a team perspective and I’d love us to win all the competitions we play in, particularly the Premier League and Champions League. We are Manchester United and those are the trophies we should always be aiming to win.”
A lot has been talked about recently regarding Javier Hernandez and second season syndrome, but in today’s interview with Inside United magazine our very own little pea says he does allow himself to get “obsessed with scoring goals” and maintains that he would swap finding the net for more trophies.
“I’ve never had a goal target, I don’t want to be obsessed with scoring goals, I don’t want to be only that player who only scores goals, and if I score goals I’ve played well and if I didn’t score goals I played badly.”
“It’s more about doing my best for the team – if the goals come then great, but if someone else scores instead of me then it’s still great for the United fans and for the club.”
“You can never play one man against 11, and one player can never score all the goals by himself. If the goals are coming then good, but as I’ve always said, I would swap every one of my goals for a title with Manchester United.”
“It was difficult to believe, really,” he said, in reference to last season’s final day drama. “For so many years that type of game was a fable of Manchester United, with goals in the last minute [to win big games], and sometimes it is part of life to experience the bad moments like this one.”
“It was a very strange day because in the space of one minute we thought that the title was going to be ours, and then City scored twice, and that’s it.”
“When you win you learn to keep working hard in order to keep doing the things you did to win the title. And when you lose, you need to learn from the mistakes you made. It’s not like one, two or three people are guilty of making mistakes – it’s a team game and every player wants to do their best to help the team to win trophies. I think we all learned a lot from last season and we’re confident we can come back this season.”
The new addition of Inside United is out in stores and online from today
