Aston Villa's Swedish international has played the majority of his 201 games for the club as a central defender. But with no other cover for the injured Mark Delaney and Aaron Hughes, he has spent the last seven Premiership games filling in as an emergency right-back. Yet the prospect of being shown a clean pair of heels by Manchester United's flying winger at Villa Park has left him sweating. And he has hinted to boss Martin O'Neill that now might be a good time for normal service to be resumed.
Mellberg, 29, said, "It's been all right playing at right-back but I obviously prefer playing in the centre because I'm more comfortable there. I used to play right-back for Sweden when I first broke into the international team.""But that was a long time ago and I hadn’t played there for quite some time before this season.
I guess I'll be marking either Ryan Giggs or Cristiano Ronaldo on Saturday. But I'd rather it was Wayne Rooney because I played against him in the World Cup in Germany last summer. Giggs and Ronaldo are both world-class players. But there's something extra special about Ronaldo. He's very quick and skilful with the ball at his feet and wins a lot of free-kicks."
Despite United's surprise defeat at West Ham last weekend, Mellberg is still tipping Alex Ferguson's side to edge out Chelsea in the title race. The Old Trafford giants' nine-point lead at the top of the Premiership has been cut to just two.But Mellberg said, "I just think United have been very impressive this season and I fancy them to win the league. But this is a good game for us on Saturday because we need to get our home form going again — we can play this one with no pressure."
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