As he prepares to enter the final year of his contract, Edwin van der Sar says he is not thinking about life beyond the upcoming season.

The Dutch goalkeeper, who joined the Reds in June 2005, is out of contract at the end of the 2007/08 campaign.

A cruciate ligament injury to returning loan stopper Ben Foster means van der Sar will definitely start the season as number one and the 36-year-old says he is focused on helping the team do well, rather than worrying about where he will be this time next year.

"I don't know what is going to happen at the end of the season," he admits. "I am at a certain stage in my life when you just take it step-by-step.

"When you are 28 you might sign a four-or-five year deal, it is the same when you are 21. I am not that age, so I am not worried about the situaion.

"When you reach my age, you have to take it like that both in terms of the club and the player. You must always try to keep the pleasure in your game.

"When you don't have that 100 per cent desire any more, you can stop or go to a lower level or whatever."

Van der Sar has been a solid performer for the Reds during his two-year stay at Old Trafford. But he is the first to admit that his displays towards the end of the last campaign were not at the level they should be.

"I didn't have the same consistency at the end of the season as I had in the previous part of the season," he says. "I don't know why.

"It is difficult to be 100% over the whole year. There were a couple of things not to my satisfaction. Of course, you think about your mistakes, you analyse them. Then you have to get on with it."