Rio Sings The Praises Of Squad

Rio Ferdinand believes our mental toughness and bench options were vital in securing a 1-1 draw at Lyon on Wednesday in the Champions League.

The defender had a lot of work to do but did it admirably but still has reasons to be grateful to our forwards.

He admitted that United were not at their best but stressed that we deserved the draw that put the Reds in the driving seat.

'First and foremost you have to get results,' he said. 'Performances come second. Ideally, you would like the performances but that's not always possible.

'Against Lyon I thought we played well in parts. After the break we performed well for about 10 to 15 minutes until they scored.

'Then we upped the tempo again, they sat back and we managed to get the vital away goal. Away from home, performances come a long way second.

'At this stage we need to concentrate on results. To score an away goal is important. We did that and that's going to be a big advantage to take back to Old Trafford.'

And there we'll have Carlos Tevez again who saved United from defeat. Seeing that he, Saha and Nani all started on the bench, United finally have good attacking options in the squad.

'A lot of the teams we'll be competing against in Europe have those options,' Rio commented on it.

'Arsenal have them, Lyon were able to put on someone like Ben Arfa in the later stages of the game but our options paid off.'