GILES SMITH'S THURSDAY THOUGHTS

It took our team only nine minutes to do
what no other Premier League club has
so far managed in the knockout stages of
the 2013/14 Champions League: score.

Unfortunately, it took our team only a
further hour to do what every other
Premier League club has so far managed
in the knockout stages of the 2013/14
Champions League: concede.

But never mind. The crucial thing is,
unlike all those other Premier League
clubs, we restricted ourselves to just the
one concession, thereby earning a
respectable draw, complete with the
handy 'bonus ball' of an away goal,
meaning that (again, unlike all those other
Premier League clubs) we go into the
second leg of our tie with our Champions
League hopes excitingly alive, rather than
dead as a snail crushed under a
flowerpot.

Of course, we could quibble and say that,
on the basis of the chances created in the
first half alone, 0-3 would have been a
plausible outcome last night, and a
somewhat more emphatic scoreline to
take home with us from the so-called
'hell' of Istanbul (though hell, as so many
of the poets have noted down the years,
doesn't half go quiet when the visitors
score).

We could also point out that when we did
eventually concede, and lose a lead that
had looked, until that point, entirely
comfortable, it was in a slightly surprising
manner and from the game's only real
defensive lapse on our part - a corner
landing on the head of a player unmarked.

That's always disappointing.
At the same time, it wouldn't be right if
ALL of the second legs involving Premier
League sides were totally foregone
conclusions (not to mention the ones
involving Real Madrid and PSG, which are
even more over than the ones involving
Manchester City and Arsenal). The
tournament would start to look like a
mockery.
So, in a way, a 1-1 draw, while
no doubt putting us in the driving seat, is
our gift to the continuing seriousness of
the Champions League.

It also ensures
that there is a little edge left in the match
to further pep up the much-anticipated
homecoming of Didier Drogba in just
under three weeks.

He's welcome to score, by the way.
Though only if we've already scored
ourselves at least twice. We want the night
to be interesting and emotional - but not
that interesting and emotional.

There was much scoffing over the plight
of Manchester United after their 2-0 loss
to Olympiacos on Tuesday night. But I
think we owe it to our former rivals and to
the Champions League as a whole to
show some respect, take the loftier, more
grown-up view and not join in.

After all, credit to David Moyes's men:
there is no such thing as an easy tie at
this stage of the Champo. Or, at any rate,
certainly not for United. Though maybe
for Real Madrid. And PSG. And Barça. And
Bayern Munich.
Also, by digging in, and keeping the
scoreline down to just the two goals,
United at least kept the tie, if not actually
alive, then kind of semi-alive-ish in a sort
of vaguely alive-style kind of way for the
return leg in a fortnight's time.

Yet, despite all this, Roy Keane, working
as pundit of some kind on ITV, used the
occasion to weigh in and say he thought
the club needed SIX new star players.

That remark was both unhelpful and
unnecessarily controversial. It sounded
like yet another example of him indulging
a regrettably widespread tendency, in this
day and age, to say something purely in
order to get a reaction.

But then Keane was a United player for a
long time, so if he goes easy on them at
moments like these, and under-estimates
the situation by putting a ridiculously low
figure on it, nobody should be entirely
surprised.

Moreover, not enough has been said
positively, in these circumstances, about
the stance taken by Wayne Rooney, who
gave the club an enormous vote of
confidence by signing a new contract
which potentially binds him to Old
Trafford for the remainder of his working
life.

You would need a heart of granite not to
be moved by the fact that, when other
tempting offers from currently successful
clubs, in a position to fight for trophies,
would surely have been available to him,
Rooney chose instead to pledge his future
to a long-term rebuilding project.
I think we all know that most players, at
Rooney's age and at the particular point
at which he finds himself in his career,
would be looking for medals. He,
however, has taken the patient view and
chosen austerity, albeit at a rumoured £7
billion per week, or however much it was.

We should rise to applaud him, next time
we have the opportunity to do so. Player-
loyalty of this deep and enduring kind is
not something we hear too much of, in
these, alas, oh-so-money-driven times.
In his press conference before the
Galatasaray match, Roberto Mancini
claimed to have built the formidable Inter
team with which Jose Mourinho won the
Champions League. In the same breath,
Mr Mancini made the claim he has made
before, that he also built the current,
extremely strong Manchester City side.

However, in case anyone is starting to
wonder, or no longer knows quite what to
believe: Mr Mancini did not build the
Shard. London's (and indeed Europe's)
tallest skyscraper was, in fact, despite
any claims you may hear to the contrary,
the work of Renzo Piano, the renowned
Italian architect. I'm pleased to clear that
up.

He didn't build the Taj Mahal either.

Does anyone seriously think it matters a
jot whether or not John Terry got an
actual touch to that Frank Lampard free-
kick at the end of last Saturday's Everton
game? Is not the central and remarkable
thing that, in the 92nd minute of a
tactically fraught and critical game we
could ill afford not to win, our 33-year-old
captain was the player straining like an
unleashed bulldog to get across the
opposition's six-yard box and convert one
point into a possibly pivotal three?

Yet many analysts afterwards fought to
dispute Terry's claim to the goal, and
frequently in the gleeful manner of people
exposing some kind of fraud. Then again,
as Martin Samuel explained in an
excellent, fair-minded piece in yesterday's
Daily Mail , Terry (unlike, for example,
Luis Suarez) has to fight for every morsel
of credit these days. Odd. But at least
people around these parts know what
we're seeing, recognise redemption when
it happens in front of our eyes and are
grateful for it.