Time for us to stand up and be counted

In his first column for The National, the Manchester City goalkeeper Shay Given gives his view on tonight's European match.

Shay Given will be writing a regular column for The National .

Games like this are the reason why you play football. There's something special about these European nights, the stakes are so high and you want to be involved. Some people have a go at this competition because there are a lot of games in the earlier part, but we are now at the end that matters and it's exciting. We want to get to the final and win it. We are 3-1 down after the first leg, but we still believe we can come back and go through.

We have nothing to lose because people are expecting us to go out, so in a sense we can relax a bit and just go for it. And, in football, anything is possible. We beat Aalborg 2-0 at home in the last round and it should have been four or five, and then we lose by the same score there and it goes to penalties. Then just look at Liverpool's Champions League 4-4 draw at Chelsea which was a phenomenal game.

Liverpool were also 3-1 down after the first leg and had the same attitude that we have now. No one expected them to go through, but the tie swung in their favour for a while and they looked like they could pull it off. But Chelsea are a good team and they managed to get their heads together and get the result. Liverpool showed us what is possible and the semi-finals are not out of our reach. Every game is different. We can improve on the first leg in Germany, and we know that on our game and on the night, we can be as good as anyone.

Hamburg are a very good team, but we caused them problems over there. Hopefully they will underestimate us and we can show what a good team we are. If we can keep it tight, keep a clean sheet, then we have got the players who can cause them problems. This is a big occasion for everyone, players and supporters, and we need to make it count. My biggest moment in Europe came at Newcastle when we beat Barcelona in the Champions League in 1997.

They had players like Luis Figo and Rivaldo and people expected them to just turn up to beat us. It was Newcastle's first year in the Champions League and we won 3-2 with Tino Asprilla scoring a hat-trick. Sometimes Tino would drive you crazy on the pitch, but then he would do magical things like that. He was untouchable that night; special players can do that. Robinho is a world-class player for us now and you want world-class players to stand up and perform and I'm sure he will do that tonight.

He performs well on the big stage and we are on the big stage now. But it's not just about Robinho, we all have to step up to the mantle now. We all have bad games and make mistakes, we all have dips in form now and again, but it's about reacting and bouncing back from them. The great thing about football is that in the next game you can put things right. If we can do that and get the right result then all the negativity can be put to one side.

The negativity, the speculation, unites us. It's about us sticking together as staff and players, focusing on what we need to do and trying to silence a few people. The only way to do that is on the pitch and tonight would be great time to do that. [e-mail]