English clubs should not be pleased to go to places like Barcelona and get away without a thrashing. They should be able to compete. They have the resources.

United's history was built on attacking football, which does not always mean that the team kept clean sheets or did not concede chances.

Martin Skrtel is good at rattling the opposing centre-forward.

I played for 20 years for Sir Alex Ferguson, and he could be a scary man.

I got sent off a few times in my life, but I never lost my head. I mistimed tackles, and I made mistakes.

When I finally quit for the second time in the summer of 2013, I had accepted that this really was the end, and, having got over that, the move into retirement was a lot easier.

On my mum Marie's side, my nana was from the Republic of Ireland, and my granddad was from the north. Lots of families in Manchester have strong Irish connections, but it never occurred to me to play for anyone other than England.

Our modern coaching culture is not to put too much pressure on any one performance, to let an individual flourish over time.

That is the issue with signing young players from other big European football nations - at some point, they will want to go home.

Messi is as famous as any footballer has ever been, and yet, when it comes down to it, we don't know much about him. I read that he is a family man and likes to walk his dogs, but beyond that, he's a mystery, really. I like that.

I first remember Wayne Rooney from a game at Old Trafford in 2002 when he came on as a late substitute for Everton and, in a brilliant 15-minute performance, skipped past me on a couple of occasions.

'Elusive' is the word that immediately springs to mind when I think about Messi's style of play. You think you have an eye on him and then - blink - he has gone, only to reappear somewhere else in space, with the ball.

There is no doubt that my former manager Sir Alex exerted an influence over some referees. He was the master of dropping a comment into his Friday press conference - for instance, how long it had been since we had been given a penalty, or the treatment meted out to a player like Cristiano Ronaldo.

Playing against Messi, as I've said before, is as tough a test of your concentration as any in football. At any moment, he can take the mickey out of you. Physically, it is demanding, but mentally even more so. You cannot switch off.

When you are playing for a top club, when the pressure is on, when scrutiny is everywhere, you need some privacy. You need a place away from public view where people can be open, and, at times, difficult conversations need to be had.

From United's point of view, it is always difficult to tell just when a young footballer is going to mature into a first-class professional ready to play at the highest level, but the story of how Pogba slipped away from United has more than one strand to it.

As a midfielder at United, I had to pass the ball forward, and yes, it did not always work. It did not always mean putting a chance on a plate for the strikers. It was up to them to get on the ball and score goals. Was it easy? No, but we were playing for United. It was not supposed to be easy.

The hardest thing to coach is scoring goals and creativity.

I was lucky enough to play at Old Trafford, and we always talked about the atmosphere on a Tuesday night, the special atmosphere you create, and the crowd is rocking when you go out for a warm-up.

In some ways, I admire the principle of a manager who is determined that his team must play their own game.

If you want a measure of how private a place the dressing room was when I was growing up at Manchester United, consider this: even Sir Alex Ferguson would knock before coming into the dressing room at the Cliff, the old training ground. The dressing room is for the players - and the players only.

The game changes so quickly, and you have to get yourself in a position mentally where you can deal with whatever is thrown at you.

I won three FA Cup finals, two League Cup finals, and played in one of United's two Champions League-winning finals. But I lost in a lot of finals, too: the FA Cup in 1995, 2005 and 2007, the League Cup in 2003, and the Champions League in 2009 and 2011.

I worked with many great assistants to Sir Alex Ferguson over the years. Yet sometimes a manager's second-in-command is more suited to that role than any other. You confide in them - you tell them things that you would not tell the manager - and they are that bridge between the boss and the players.