Fergie Proud Of His Players!

Sir Alex Ferguson praised his team, saying they played like champions after earning a 1-1 draw at Blackburn Rovers.

Passion and tenacity are often lauded in England by managers who can't call on real quality. Sir Alex is not one of them but this time he decided to praise the workrate and the attitude.

'The tenacity and passion we showed to win the game was fantastic. We played like champions and I'm very proud of the players,' he told MUTV.

'We'd rather have had the three points and I think we deserved them, but we've rescued a point yet again with another late goal from Carlos Tevez. So that's very positive.'

Tenacity and passion can take you very, very far: just look at Celtic's UEFA Cup final in 2003 and Rangers' run in the same competition this season. However, I'd prefer if in Barcelona we showed a bit more quality of the like displayed in the last 25 minutes.

Fergie, meanwhile, did not forget about Rob Styles either: the astonishingly incompetent referee's bad calls were too numerous to go unnoticed.

'I think we could have had three penalities, but we're getting breaks against us at the moment. We can't go on about those decisions though or the fact that Brad Friedel had a fantastic game.

'We had enough chances to win it. We dominated the second half and were very unlucky not to win.'