Ronaldo must keep his head in derby heat

CRISTIANO Ronaldo is a fantastic player who has a winning mentality that only a few players in any sport in the world can boast.

His manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer compared him to Michael Jordan after the Atalanta game and he is right, both in his ability to ‘clutch’ a game but also about the standards he demands from himself and the rest of the team.

The problem with this mentality, however, is sometimes it can boil over into anger if things aren’t going the player’s way. Ronaldo only has seven straight red cards and four sending-offs from a second yellow in his entire career – but he could have one more after the Liverpool game this season.

With Liverpool midfielder Curtis Jones on the ground, Ronaldo kicked out multiple times, his only saving grace being that the ball was between the kicks and the 20-year-old’s body.

Former referee Dermot Gallagher had to say about the incident on Sky Sport’s Ref Watch: “Ronaldo was lucky the ball was there, that is what saved him from being shown a red card. What also helped was that he stopped when he did. It wasn’t the wisest thing to do.”

At the time it happened, Gary Neville stated that the player had ‘lost his head’.

During his first spell with United, Ronaldo was sent off four times and two of the red cards came against the same opponent – City.

His first was for a studs-up challenge on Andy Cole in 2006 and the second was for two yellow cards.

United will need all of Ronaldo’s desire to win and aggression to come out the victors against their fierce rivals in the Manchester derby, but they will be wary that if things begin to go south as they did against Liverpool, they will have to make sure that these positive traits don’t boil over into negative ones.