The centre-back joined United in a 30 million pounds move from Leeds United four years ago but, after winning the title in his first season at the club, Ferdinand and his teammates have missed out to Arsenal and Chelsea in the race for the championship.

The defender, 27, accepts he will ultimately be judged in terms of his successes on the pitch with United and with England -- and he admits he is growing impatient at his failure to land the biggest prizes.

Ferdinand, though, believes that with United's main rivals stuttering in the league -- and with Sir Alex Ferguson's men winning their opening two Champions League group games -- he has never had a better chance to increase his personal trophy haul.

"One of the reasons for coming here was to take my football onto another level," he said.

"I think winning things elevates you to another level, even being talked about as a good footballer, it means more if you are winning things.

"The manager said its is easier to win your first title rather than retaining it or getting another one. And, disappointingly, that has been shown to be true.

"We have had a decent start this season, albeit it's only a few games in. If you look back to last season, we were a lot of points behind at an early stage of the season so we would like to think we will be there or thereabouts come Christmas and that's when the nitty gritty of the season starts.

"I think we just have to concentrate on ourselves," he added Wednesday at the launch of his book 'My Story'.

"It's all about us. If we keep our house in order and we become a more consistent team then it will take a good team to finish above us and I genuinely do believe that and I think the rest of the squad shares that belief.

"All that's been missing has been consistency. We play well for eight, nine, ten games and then have a couple of bad ones and you can't afford to do that if you want to win the league."

With United taking a huge step towards making it through to the Champions League knock-out stage with the 1-0 win against Benfica in Lisbon on Tuesday, Ferdinand and his teammates are poised to erase the memory of last season's European flop.

And while the victory in the Stadium of Light was hard-fought, the defender believes that the win -- their first in nine away games in the competition -- will ultimately mean much more than simply three points in the club's efforts to repeat their Champions League success of 1999.

"The Benfica result went a long way towards putting belief into the squad in Europe," Ferdinand added.

"It had been a long time since we've won away in Europe and it was a hard game yesterday (Tuesday) against a Portuguese side, in a hostile environment.

"I think it will prove to be good for a lot of the young players and will hopefully help us in the next few games in Europe."