Sport.co.uk Interview

Sport.co.uk caught up with indie rave sensations Delphic to discuss their beloved Manchester United and their eventful music career thus far...



Another two goals for Wayne Rooney against Fulham. Is he now the complete striker?



JAMES: He's starting to remind me a bit of Alan Shearer in that it always seems like he's inevitably going to score in a game. All his goals this season seem to have come from inside the box so we're seeing a completely different Wayne Rooney and, bearing in mind that we know he can score from anywhere because we've seen it before, then I guess you'd have to say yes.

If you were going to look at the top three in the Premiership there's not much to choose between Drogba, Torres and Rooney ability wise. All three are unplayable on their day, but Rooney this season has shown a different level of maturity and mental attitude that the other two don't quite have. He used to lose his temper as much as the other two are prone to sulking if things don't go their way. Torres in a decent team would be frightening. But Rooney's attitude and willingness to learn make him the top man I think.

Look at the way he's become so good in the air now so, yep, complete striker and England's only hope of getting anywhere in South Africa.



What do you make of Sir Alex Ferguson's admission of misusing him prior to this season?



RICK: Well it was obvious at the time and Sir Alex and Rooney talked about it last season. He's a total team player, he was prepared to sacrifice himself for the team and that's why he's priceless. You see when he scores the first thing he does is acknowledge the provider - the opposite of Ronaldo.

Fergie's been developing this 4-5-1 turning into 4-3-3 for the past few seasons and last season played Ronaldo at the spearhead of it and Rooney got shifted to the wing. Because Ronaldo did so little working back, a lot of Rooney's play became defensive.

It seems crazy now given that we bought Ronaldo as a wide man and seeing how good Rooney's been up top that we didn't play Ronaldo wide and Rooney in this role, but Rooney's discipline and maturity is what makes him so good at it and i'm not sure we'd have seen Ronaldo work as hard on the wing. He would have drifted looking for the ball and instead of picking out Rooney like Valencia and Nani have done he would have taken it on himself. When you've got a player as individually effective as Ronaldo I guess you have to build around him, but if we could have coached Ronaldo to play a role then imagine how much more devastating United could have been. Maybe all this has made Rooney ready for this role, but you can't help but feel like despite 3 leagues and a CL medal, we've not seen the Wayne Rooney of the Euros in Portugal til now.



Is the rest of the squad in the right kind of shape to sustain any drop off in spending and carry on challenging? What areas do you think need strengthening?



RICK: Not really in the medium to long term. There's only Johnny Evans from the homegrown bunch that looks likely to make the grade, and he looks more like an O Shea than a Vidic or Ferdinand - a good squad player. We really need a goalkeeper, a right back, a central midfielder and a striker, probably a top class central defender to replace Vidic if he's on his way as the rumours go. Giggs, Neville, Scholes and Van der Sar are still key team/squad members who need replacing and that's expensive. Berbatov and Anderson don't look likely to stay the course, so there's a fair investment needed to stay competitive. Having said that, we can't compete financially with City or Chelsea - even if we didn't have the debt, they just spend silly money and we couldn't go that far with or without the Glazers. But as long as Sir Alex and Rooney are there we can hang in if we spend enough to keep the team up there. Only Ferguson and Wenger could do that.



Historically, the Glazers are always in it for the long haul. What do you think of David Gill’s assertion that they have a “sensible business strategy"?



MATT: It's b******s as far as we can see. How can spending something like £50m a year on interest be a sensible business strategy? I don't know what the Glazers want from the club. Seems to me like they bought it expecting to fleece far more out of it than they have - they underbudgeted for costs and even last year when United had one of the most succesful seasons in history they managed to lose money without the Ronaldo fee. How do you lose money with the biggest sports brand in the world if you have a 'sensible business strategy'? Gill's made a fool of himself for his £1.8 million a year saying one minute that "debt is the road to ruin" and then that it's sensible. It's not just bad for United it's bad for the whole of football.



Do you manage to get to the game much/at all? Is it easy to follow United when you’re out on the road?



MATT: Most people around us are United fans so we're usually able to find a pub or have it on the computer. Our tour manager is more on top of that than he is anything else! We don't get to as many games as we'd like anymore because we're always touring.



Who are your top five favourite United players of all time? And your five least favourite?



RICK: Difficult, but just to make it clear favourite doesn't mean best - just favourite - for me Cantona, lit up the place every time he got the ball. Capable of anything.

MATT: Irwin - never let you down.

JAMES: Mark Hughes - I know he went to City to manage but he was a legend when he played for us. Some of his goals were unreal. Oldham in the semi final at Wembley, last minute of extra time. Incredible.

RICK: Two more? Pallister and Robson. Legends

MATT: Least favourite is hard because we've had some awful players but they did try - like Ralph Milne was bad but he wasn't a bad fella?

RICK: Liam Miller was rubbish.

JAMES: Dong - embarrassing.

RICK: Bosnich was a tosser.

MATT: Good shout, what about Barthez as well?

JAMES: Yep, he was a twat. One more - Blanc, but only because he replaced Stam who shouldn't have gone.



Best game you've ever been to?



RICK: In '99 (I think?) we beat Liverpool in the FA Cup with 2 goals in the last minute. They'd been winning most of the game. It was the result more than the match - so satisfying.



What's it like hearing 'Red Light' blaring out at Old Trafford?



MATT: A bit surreal. Great, obviously, but you feel a bit removed from it really. You get something finished and then it's kind of out there. It's great of course but hopefully there'll be more to come.



Onto some more music-y questions. What's it like to be on the crest of such a wave? Is it still hard to compute everything that's going on? What's the most thrilling and/or rock and roll experience you've had so far?



JAMES: Like Matt said, it's a bit surreal. We are so busy getting on with everything that we haven't got any idea what's going on outside our bubble.

We just try to play better and better and write better tunes - that's all we're thinking about. We've no concept of whether it's going well or not other than that the gigs seem to be getting bigger. We've always been a bit like that - we're very locked into what we're doing. Rock and roll wise, I think we're still waiting for all of that...it's early days...



What's the most star-struck you've been? And the best festival/gig you've played so far? Any good 'star stories' or celebrity fans?



JAMES: We haven't been particularly star-struck yet but this year will be a lot busier festival wise so maybe if we bumped into Bjork or Radiohead then it might be a different story. No good star stories yet though i'm afraid.



How did the band come together? What led to you getting signed?



RICK: We really came together because we weren't into the music that was being made and felt like we had to do something ourselves. We'd known each other a while and just got on with it. It happened quite naturally. We went away to the Lake District to get our heads into it, wrote some tunes on our laptops and then advertised for a drummer - incredibly Dan (our drummer) showed up and was perfect. He even came up with the bands' name. Signing just kind of happened to us - we put some demos up on MySpace and next thing we knew there were people talking to us. We just let other people get on with the business side and told them what things we wanted control of and it just happened. Now we just want to keep moving forward. This is only the start for us.



What are your primary influences and what are you listening to at the moment?



MATT: Difficult question because we all like different music. We all tend to agree on Radiohead, Bjork, Sigur Ros, Aphex Twin, Orbital and Chemical Brothers, but then we really love big pop songs that people like Xenomania write. We're so locked into what we're doing that we don't get to listen to enough new music, but there's some good stuff coming out of Manchester at the moment like Everything Everything and Wu Lyf. People told us it would get busy once the band got a record out but we didn't realise quite how much, I suppose. Not that we're complaining. We're just getting used to it.


Taken from http://www.sport.co.uk/features/Football/912/Sportcouk_meetsDelphic.aspx