No crisis at Manchester United

There was frustration all round after we lost 1-0 at home to Leeds United in the FA Cup. To lose in the FA Cup to a team two divisions below us is extremely disappointing for Manchester United and very unusual.

It was a performance well below our best and a bad day for us. Leeds were sharper, quicker and better on the day and we can have no complaints. We had chances to get something out of the game, but I don't think at the end we could say we deserved to win because they played a great game. We knew it would be difficult before the game with their support and the fact that they were riding high in League One.

We were hoping to get a game last Wednesday against Manchester City to get straight back into things but the weather had other ideas. We want to get games like the one against Leeds out of our system as quickly as possible.

I don't think we were feeling extra pressure ahead of the City game. When we play like that and lose at Manchester United then everyone treats it like a disaster and it brings criticism upon us which other clubs don't get. But you expect that if you play for United, and all we can do is turn it around by winning games. The Leeds game has enabled people who wanted to criticise us to do so.

It's been the same over past 10 to 15 years - every time we have a bad defeat people say we are in crisis. Sometimes even when we draw a game people will write that we are having a crisis, but certainly we know what is coming our way if we lose a game against lower opposition. It's part and parcel of playing at our club and it doesn't annoy us because we accept what comes with playing for Manchester United.

We are placed on a pedestal for so long with our level of performance that when we drop below those standards people will willingly criticise. To be honest, we deserve criticism for the Leeds game - we just didn't perform and it wasn't acceptable.

You can go back through the past 20 years and there have been times when people have lost faith or started questioning things. As players we just get on with it. We never get too high in moments of great victory and we never get too low in moments of defeat. We have always kept level heads with regard to how we treat both victory and defeat.

Obviously, we are disappointed when we lose and we are overjoyed when we win, but the reality is such that we forget about both as quickly as possible and get on with the next game. Usually we have a game three days later so a defeat very rarely festers. The difficult ones can be when we lose a final at the end of the season and we have two months without a match - that's when things can fester.

People are asking questions about us now, but if we'd beaten Leeds nobody would be asking those questions. It was a bad defeat last week and I'm not going to brush it under the carpet, but let's put things in perspective. We're still second in the league, two points behind the top. We're still in the Champions League and we've got the Carling Cup semi-final coming up - it certainly wasn't a good day for us last Sunday but it wasn't the end of the world.

We've had bad days before and we just have to come through it. It could be the best thing that happens to us, although it doesn't feel like it now. But if we try and make the most of the bad situation then we could say it has given us some free weekends, which enables us to prepare better for Champions League games and league games. That's all we can do now - try and take the positives out of a bad situation.

A lot of our players have been around for a long time and we've had bad defeats in the past. We have been knocked out of the Champions League in the group stages, we have finished third in the league - people forget that the players at our club, with few exceptions, have suffered these types of moments before.

We don't panic in these moments and we've got a manager who won't let us panic. We look forward to the next game and think we can win it, simple as that. We play for Manchester United and we go onto the field believing we can win the match regardless of what happened in the match before.

Beck at the top

I didn't actually see David Beckham's Milan debut against Genoa but apparently he played very well. He enjoys his football and loves being in Milan. It's going to give him great preparation for the World Cup and, with all respect to the US league, this is going to sharpen his fitness and his eyes for delivery, which can only be good for him and England.

There is no doubt that Serie A is not as frenetic as the English league, but the quality is still there. They play a different way and have a different culture, but there is still that intensity there. He is playing for AC Milan, one of the greatest clubs in Europe. The pace is not so fast but the pace at international level isn't as fast as the Premier League either. Playing at a top club in front of a large crowd will give him that real buzz and adrenaline rush he needs going into a World Cup.

Long way from Malta!

The freak weather in Manchester has definitely interrupted our training last week. We didn't even train Tuesday and Wednesday because probably half the team couldn't get out of their driveways. Where I live there was about 10 inches of snow and we couldn't get up the roads.

We finally got in on Thursday and trained indoors because it was minus 12 Celsius at our Carrington training ground. The conditions right now are the coldest I have ever experienced in England. I've never known a period like this in football.

We've got under-soil heating at Carrington and state-of-the-art training facilities but even we have struggled to get out onto the training ground because of the disruption on the roads and because of the frost and ice on the pitches. We seem to be getting some of the worse temperatures here in Manchester, so spare a thought for us in Malta!

This weekend's fixtures will be interesting because I imagine most of the teams will have struggled to get onto the training pitch last week. A lot of teams have under-soil heating like us, yet we've had to train indoors and many others will have had to do the same.

Send your questions to Gary Neville to sunday@timesofmalta.com.