Fergie to journos yesterday: "Nah, you're right, I'll play him."
"Until we get the back four, we are not going to have a true assessment of the abilities of my defenders. Because once you start changing all the time, you do get inconsistency of results. That doesn't mean that players can make mistakes and get away with it and we have made some bad mistakes. But once we get the back four playing, I'm very confident we'll be okay."
On comparisons with Ercic, SAF says: "You cannot compare the players' temperaments. Eric was a more emotional, moody character who needed more than anything to play. I'm sure Rio is desperate to play tomorrow, as well, but he is a more phlegmatic character, he has handled this whole thing fantastically and has missed maybe five days' training since it started, and that was when he went to London to see his solicitor. His temperament is so calm that he has not got bitter about it and it would have been easy to do so. He's not showing a bit of badness about what happened to him, which has allowed him to enjoy his training, even if he's missed the joy of playing on Saturday. What we said at the beginning was to treat it as an injury because we have had players at this club who have missed a whole season through injury, like Roy Keane and Wes Brown."
"I think the procedures have all changed. Last Saturday at Bolton, the guy from drugs control at UK Sport came in while I was talking to the bloody players. Can you believe that? Hopefully now, everyone is in the same boat and I'm totally in agreement with that."
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