Ole on Cup draw, Johnstone and the run-in
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is relishing a hectic last few months of the season as his Manchester United players battle on three fronts.
The Reds' boss saw his side book a place in the FA Cup quarter-finals last week, with Leicester City up next in the competition.
The Europa League resumes this week and United will travel to the neutral venue of Turin for our last-32 clash against Real Sociedad.
Before that, however, we travel to West Bromwich Albion in the league this afternoon and Ole is hopeful his team can find a way past former Reds' stopper Sam Johnstone at The Hawthorns...
Firstly, what are your thoughts on the FA Cup quarter-final draw – a trip to Leicester City. What do you make of it?
“Yes another difficult tie. Leicester are a good side and we’ve had many difficult games against them lately. But you expect to have a challenge on your hands in a quarter-final anyway so we’re looking forward to it.”
That’s Liverpool, West Ham and Leicester so far in the cup, all in the top six. That’s a tough little spell of games…
“Yep but we’ve always said don’t think that you’re going to have an easy draw while I’m here in charge! But we’ll look forward to it and we’ll take the challenge head on.”
Ole relishing battles on three fronts
The boss assesses what's to come in the run-in and praises birthday boy Edinson Cavani...
For the last game there was no Eric, Paul or Phil. Has that changed at all?
“Eric is available. He's trained for a couple of days so he'll be available for selection so that's positive. Apart from that no-one else is back.”
You've had some of the younger lads training with the first team – Shola Shoretire has been this week and Amad of course too. It is good to get them involved and used to it?
“Of course. It's a decision we had to make - are they going to train with us and travel by themselves and not be a part of the U23s group and we felt with Shola it was time for him to train with us. In the Reserves games he's just got to travel by himself, he can't be in the dressing room, but we felt it was the right thing to do for him.”
Edinson turns 34 today but the way he works makes him look much younger...
“He looks like he's 24! [Smiles] He’s been such a great addition to the squad and to the culture in the group, showing that desire and determination and meticulousness with his attention to detail at his age. He has been very good for us.”
It must be fantastic for the young lads to work with him in training…
“Yes, and it’s not just his movement and his quality and his goalscoring, you just see the habits that you’ve got to have in order to have a long, successful career. We saw it with Tom Brady winning the Super Bowl and we see it with Edinson. Age is just a number and if you look after yourself you’ve got a chance to play on and we know all about that here with Ryan [Giggs] and how many years he stayed at the top.”
West Brom are obviously having a rough season, but they made it hard for us in November?
“Definitely. We scraped a 1-0 win and of course you know Sam [Allardyce] is going to organise them well. They’re going to be a physical challenge for us, they’ve got some good individual players with pace and there’s the counterattacks and set-plays… all the normal challenges in the Premier League. It’s not going to be any different. We’re looking forward to the game, it’s a test for us again because we need to kick on and improve. Every single game is a chance to for us to improve.”
Sam Johnstone was almost unbeatable against us that day in November at Old Trafford…
“He’s been that a few times this season. When they got a draw against City and a draw against Liverpool Sam had fantastic performances and against us as well. Richard [Hartis our goalkeeping coach] knows all about him, I know most things about him too, so we’ll have to try to find some way to get the ball past him.”
It’s 15 games to go for us in the league, the Europa League is starting and we’re into the latter stages of the FA Cup. Is this a really vital time now over these next three months or so?
“Yeah you say that all the time that the next game is the most important one and it is. Of course when you get into the cup competitions it’s make or break and in the league you get less and less games to make up for mishaps, so of course the closer you get to the end the more important the points will be.”
The Thursday/Sunday situation kicks in too. Is that another thing you have to handle because, for whatever reason, it is slightly different isn’t it?
“Yes it is different and we had it last season, and hopefully we can have it all the way through to the final. Let’s hope we can talk about Thursday/Sunday [for a while] because we want to go all the way.”