This story first appeared in The Sentinel on November 13, 2008

RORY Delap will be inspired by one of the finest moments of his career when Stoke City take on the toughest assignment of their season so far at Manchester United on Saturday.

The 32-year-old midfielder represents one of Stoke’s best hopes of avoiding defeat thanks to his hard-working midfield efforts and the long throws which have set up seven of their 13 Premier League goals.

But Delap has also tasted victory at Old Trafford before, having been part of the Derby side which won 1-0 there at the end of the 2000/2001 campaign.

He said: “You look for the big games as soon as the fixtures come out and it doesn’t get any bigger than this one at Old Trafford.

“When I won there with Derby we were down in the relegation zone and needed to win to be mathematically safe.

“Danny Higginbotham was also playing for us that day.

“The story was that our manager Jim Smith saw some ducks walking around the grounds of our hotel and that gave him the idea to play with a different system. Apparently that gave him inspiration.

“It worked because we outplayed them that day and Malcolm Christie scored a great goal as we won 1-0.

“Manchester United were presented with the Premier League trophy that day so there were celebrations all round.

“I don’t know if that affected them, but we weren’t bothered. We beat them and that was that.”

Stoke are a huge 16/1 with bookmakers to also claim victory at Old Trafford, but Delap says you don’t have to be quackers to believe Stoke can prevent a United success.

He said: “If we dismiss this game and say we are not going to get anything out of it, then it is pointless playing.

“We have to look to go and get a result against everyone. If we don’t have that attitude then we are not going to stay up.”

Delap says he won’t change anything about his own game, despite criticism of him by Arsene Wenger last week.

The Arsenal boss labelled Delap “cowardly” for a trip on Theo Walcott which injured the Arsenal winger during Stoke’s 2-1 victory over the Gunnners.

Delap said: “People who know me, know what I am like. I don’t care what people who don’t know me say.”

Instead, he is concentrating on trying to improve Stoke’s impressive run of just one defeat in their last five Premier League games. That form has lifted them from second-bottom of the table to 12th.

Delap said: “If we had been getting battered every week earlier in the season then we would have needed to worry.

“That wasn’t happening and we knew we could, and should, have won some of the games we lost.

“Either we didn’t take chances or there were a couple of silly mistakes.

“But we have proved in the last couple of weeks we can beat the big teams.

“There’s a confidence in the squad now and we need to continue that.”