Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer feels being held to a draw by Liverpool at Anfield was a missed opportunity.
While the result means United stay top of the Premier League, both Bruno Fernandes and Paul Pogba had good chances to win the game in the closing stages, having been frustrated by the hosts in the first half.
After the game, Ole spoke with Sky Sports, MUTV and at his press conference...
A missed opportunity
“I know we can play better, but we’re still coming away from here with a point which shows how far we’ve come in a year or even six months. We didn’t impose ourselves on the game, especially in the first half. I think we grew into the game and towards the end you felt ‘yeah, it’s here for us to win’ and we created two massive chances and they were two brilliant saves by the keeper.
“I’ve got to be honest to say I’m a bit disappointed at the moment, but still you know you’re playing against a fantastic team and they had more of the possession. But still you want to go here and you know the injuries they’ve had lately, you think you go here and get a result. We didn’t, but a point might be okay if we win the next one.”
What we can do better
“We can be more composed, we can have the ball more, we had to defend really often and I thought we gave the ball away too often. Maybe some moments we missed, when Marcus [Rashford] makes his runs in behind – maybe sometimes we don’t pass it every time he runs and sometimes we missed it when he should have had it. So a couple of things that we need to improve on.”
Pogba's performance
“I think Paul was absolutely brilliant today. We knew that he had to do a job defensively, block and help us with [Andrew] Robertson and he should have got the got the goal his performance deserved. I hope it [his inclusion on the right of midfield] was justified by his performance, because I thought Paul was excellent. I felt that he could cause them some problems.
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Rashford's centre-forward role
“I wanted Marcus up top. Because of his pace. We just missed a few moments in both the first half and the second half to play that ball a little bit quicker or with a bit more quality. It was there that we could hurt them a bit because we knew about their problems at centre-back.”
Why was Bruno substituted?
“It was a tactical decision. Bruno has been running his socks off for us in every single game since he came here. Running, more or less, every game. Towards the end, I felt Paul's physical presence in there might be a chance for us. Mason [Greenwood], you know if he gets a chance he can score in the blink of a second. But it was a throw of the dice to get Mason on, even though he had to defend against Robertson.”
Still top of the table
“It doesn’t really matter where we are now, it matters where we are in May. We move on, carry on. We feel that we’ve developed and that is a good feeling with being disappointed to only get one point away.”