In 2006, a year after his ban and drawn out contract negotiations meant Rio Ferdinand wasn’t the most popular figure at Manchester United, he scored two goals against Liverpool.

The first was a last minute header to win the game 1-0. The second was in a 2-0 win over our rivals the following season, showing composure and skill in front of goal that we hadn’t seen from Ferdinand before.

In partnership with Copa, RoM asked Ferdinand which of the two goals he preferred.

Definitely the one where I plucked it out of the sky and banged it in the top corner. That’s the best one. Carragher goes one way when I bring it down and it just gets put in the top bins. It’s nasty. You can score against anyone but against those teams that are your neighbours or your big rivals, that’s something else that comes with it. I was lucky, I scored a couple of goals against Liverpool. That feeling isn’t matching against any other teams.

While of course the second goal was the better of the two, the first time he scored against Liverpool was electric. We’d had a disappointing start at the the turn of the year, drawing our first three games in January before losing to City. A 5-0 win against Burton in the FA Cup lifted the mood but the pressure was on us when we faced Liverpool, whose last defeat in the league came in October. We were just one point ahead of them in the league, having played two more games, so a defeat would have seen them leapfrog us.

As it was, Rio popped up with a 90th minute winner and Gary Neville went bananas, earning himself a £5k fine in the process.