Bailey: Reds are massive in SA

the youngsters in action. I thought Scott Wootton played very well at the back and I thought Anders [Lindegaard], in goal, was very solid. I was very impressed with him. [Dimitar] Berbatov's touches were also out of this world at times. I think there were a lot of positives to take out of that friendly. To go away from home and play a decent side after a long trip from England isn't easy, so I think United did well.

What was the appetite like for United in South Africa when you were playing?
Well, when I was playing South Africans could only watch one game on TV a year and that was the FA Cup final. So they saw me play in 1979, 1983 and 1985. That helped fire the imagination of people. Here was an English lad, brought up in South Africa, playing for Manchester United. Of course, there was also Bruce Grobbelaar, who's from nearby Zimbabwe, at Liverpool, so what you find when you meet the older football fans is that they're either United or Liverpool supporters. In the modern era, when we get every game in every competition, people have a lot more exposure to other teams so you see a few different shirts around the place. Even a few Manchester City fans have come out of the woodwork!

What was pre-season like when you played with United?
All we did was run, run, run. We'd run up big hills and then back down again - the last person back would have to do it again. Looking back, it seems so antiquated. Why were we not learning from other countries who had already embraced sports science? The Italians were ahead of us and America was way ahead - they had masseurs and sports psychologists even then. We just turned up at pre-season and were told to run. And as a goalkeeper, that didn't do me an awful lot of good.