Skinner: It's called Fergie time for a reason

“We have that mentality to keep fighting, keep progressing, keep trying to get free kicks, keep trying to score.

“This result shows much more about our mentality and it’s a massive sign of what we can achieve. Those are signs of a team that is on the up and growing.

“We can achieve what we want to do if we keep that attitude.”

Aston Villa showed out in front of their home fans and the Reds struggled to control them at times in the first half.

Laura Blindkilde and Rachel Daly combined well, with United struggling to contain them in moments, something Skinner revealed they discussed half time.

“We broke out of jail by the end of that game,” he added. “The thing is we just don’t give up. The first half we were not good enough and we said that, we told each other at half time and we agreed.

“We knew that we had to get our actions right.

“We tried to play a game that is the Manchester United way of playing where we want to control possession but Villa were all over us.

“It took us 45 minutes too long to change the tactics. It’s another learning curve and I think we broke out of jail because we deserved to.”

The boss was also pleased with how we adapted and executed ‘different ways’ of finding the back of the net, saying: “When the chips are down you have to find different ways of scoring and we had the ability to do that.

“We were not tight enough in the first half. Rachel Daly is absolutely deadly in the box and we got blocked, we got marked.”

The game could have gone differently, had United not seen a goal chalked off for a foul on Villa’s Hannah Hampton, to the disappointment of Skinner. 

“We had a goal chalked off when it was their player blocking the goalkeeper,” he said. “They gave a foul when it should have been a goal for us. We could have had another one and the game would have been different.

“We need to support the process for refereeing in this league. 

“The league has to invest to make sure that these referees have the ability to do this properly and full-time, not have to go away to a day job and come back. That’s not fair.”

With three games left for United, we sit six points clear at the top of the table having played the most games of the chasing pack. Though fans will have an eye on fixtures across the league, Skinner reaffirms that his only focus is on his players. 

“We can only concentrate on our own games. If our fixtures fall first then we need to keep doing what we can do,” said Marc, looking ahead to the final few games of the season. 

“We take it one game at a time. For us, it’s about winning those games to put us where we want to be.

“There are three games in the league to go and we want to win them.”