Alright?

Superb Manchester derby at the weekend, eh? A great advert for the passion and madness of the Premier League. That must have been completely mental for the lads to play in.

You need a special sort of mentality to play in a derby match, I reckon. It is a totally different game of football. Almost a totally different sport at times.

The week before the match you start to feel the pressure building up and building up. You can tell it is a match that means so much to the fans. The local newspapers start the ball rolling with all these stories about derbies from the past, and it just whips the fans into some sort of frenzy.

I find it a bit weird, actually, how mad for it the fans get around the time of derby matches. I have this image of them, stumbling down the street like zombies with their arms outstretched, with their eyes glazed-over and foam dribbling from their mouths.

Thankfully, us players very rarely actually meet any real fans like them, because most of us don't actually live anywhere near the city or town we play in.

While the zombie fans seem to live on top of each other in those crumbling terraced houses that surround the stadium, us players prefer to live 30 miles away in a nice leafy suburb where we can get a bit of peace and quiet.

As the derby approaches, the gaffer usually gives the squad a little pep-talk, reminding us all how much the match means to the fans and that even though your city rivals are 12 places below you in the league and no threat whatsoever, this will be the most important match of the season.

Some players are just made for derby matches. For some lads, the foreign boys especially, it is just another match. I'm not saying they're stupid or anything, but they can't get it into their head that this match is anything more than just another game.

During the warm-up, they will be laughing and joking around as usual. They comb their hair and wave to their family in the stands, perhaps even have a friendly chat on the halfway line with an old team-mate currently playing for the opposition.

Meanwhile, the local lads are giving it 100% focus. They stand in the middle of the pitch, granite-jawed, eyes closed, breathing slow and deep, chanting some weird mystic mantra to themselves in this disturbing, animalistic voice that seems to come from a very dark place in the pit of their stomach.

Those are the lads who you really want on your side in a derby match. Those mentally-unstable characters who would literally saw off their arm and throw it at an opposition striker if it meant denying him a goal-scoring opportunity.

Remember that image of Roy Keane stood over Alf-Inge Haaland, phlegm flying out of his mouth, veins bulging in his temples as he screamed his satisfaction at the knee-high tackle that had supposedly just ended the Norwegian's career?

That is the sort of character you want by your side in a derby match. That is the sort of character the fans love to see fighting their corner. They might be mentally unstable, but they seem to understand how much a derby match means to the everyday fan.

There aren't many of those sorts of players about nowadays.

I think that maybe the fans might see myself as one, I don't know. Perhaps they look at me and say: "You know, I'm glad we've got Pharrell Bell playing for us against the scum on Saturday. He understands what it means to the fans. He's one of us."

I hope so.

Anyway, it was a cracking Manchester derby and it has really got me fired up for our next derby match. Hopefully the Gaffer will see that I am the sort of player who can raise my game another notch in these high-pressure matches and see that I can do a job in these unique sporting occasions.

Because although Pharrell Bell might live in a nice five-bed mansion in the suburbs instead of a two-up, two-down council house with an outside toilet, he has never lost touch with the working-class fan.