Kieran Trippier ahead of Manchester United: "This schedule is the reality of football" | OneFootball

Tonight we face Manchester United, in what is always a fierce game. Michael Carrick has done an amazing job since he took charge so it’s going to be another tough game, but we’re at home with our supporters. Whoever we’re up against we’ll give everything.

It’s good to be back at home this week. We had a ridiculous schedule with seven out of eight games away before Saturday’s visit of Everton. We’ve got to give a lot of respect to our supporters – especially considering how much money they’ve paid to come and watch us.

The numbers travelling to Qarabağ, which must have took four or five different trips, was remarkable. We’ve tried to put performances on for them, and I think we’ve done that.

We came together as a squad after the Brentford game here almost a month ago. That was good. Sometimes in football you need it, when it’s just you as players. When you go through difficult moments, you have a chat with each other, make sure we’re all on the same page moving forward. It was a tough period for us, we’re not doubting that, but it was a crucial moment in our season where we all sat down together, we were all honest with each other.

Even though we were going through a bad moment, we were giving everything just results and decisions weren’t going our way. We looked at ourselves individually and as a group, and we responded with some encouraging results.

That’s why Saturday’s game with Everton was so disappointing, but we must ensure that when we lose we do not get too low, just like we don’t get too high when we win.

Take our away form. This season has had mixed emotions away from home, but we feel like we got some massive results against Villa, Tottenham and Qarabağ, while the Manchester City one could have gone either way. We move on and we just focus on the next game and now we have three more games at home this week. We want three wins.

This schedule is the reality of football, and the competitions we want to be in. We want to be in the Champions League, FA Cup, Carabao Cup, going far in every competition.

It will be no different tonight. It’s always a massive game in the history of Newcastle United and Manchester United. I think it is a fixture that speaks for itself.

We know we only have four home games remaining in the Premier League after this, and we know we need to finish as high as possible and as strong as possible.

But it is one game at a time, and you have to look at the reality. The reality is we have so many games, you can’t look too far ahead, so we continue to focus on the next game. It sounds like a cliché but it’s true – you can’t start looking three or four games ahead, you have to look at now.

And now is Manchester United.