What has Maguire been speaking to Martinez about?
Manchester United skipper Harry Maguire says he and Lisandro Martinez particularly enjoy the sort of determined defending that helped keep West Ham United at bay in our most recent Old Trafford outing.
The Reds are back in action at the Theatre of Dreams on Thursday night, taking on Aston Villa in the third round of the Carabao Cup, following away games at Real Sociedad and Villa.
The 1-0 win over the Hammers provided a perfect illustration of backs-to-the-wall defensive work in the closing stages, in a bid to keep the clean sheet and secure three points, and Maguire admits he and Martinez were in their element.
Maguire will hope to return to action in the cup tie, having been on the bench for the Premier League loss at Villa Park, and he previewed the game in United Review, the official matchday programme.
"As a centre-back, and a centre-back who likes to defend the box, it’s really – the last 20 minutes [against West Ham] - are really enjoyable," he said. "Although they are really tense, it’s something that me and Licha [Martinez] were speaking about, they’re the moments you want to play for.
"You want to defend, you want to hold on to that clean sheet, do everything you can to keep the ball out of the back of the net and I think we did it really well in the last 20 minutes. Obviously, we want to play a little bit better and keep the ball better than we did in the last 20-25 minutes.
"I felt like we had good control of the game for the first 70 minutes and we lost it a little bit in the last 20," he added. "So it’s something that we’ll work on, that we won’t need to defend that many corners or free-kicks, but yeah for sure as a centre-back that’s what you enjoy, that’s what you want to do.
"You want to defend and come out and keep a clean sheet and win 1-0. 1-0s are always the best for a centre-back.”
The England international believes it's imperative United keep on the road to Wembley in the Carabao Cup by knocking Unai Emery's men out, with silverware high on his list of priorities this term.
"I think all the cup competitions, we want to go as far as we can," he said. "We had a really poor season last year in the Premier League but also in the cups.
'Every game is so important'
Harry Maguire discusses the value of keeping clean sheets ahead of Villa's visit...
"In the cups, we went out far too early to teams where we feel like we shouldn’t be going out to," the centre-back admitted. "So we’ve got to get that right this year. We’ve got to be fully focused for each competition. I think you’ve seen in the Europa League, how focused we are. We had one little setback against Real Sociedad which was – we lost the game through a really soft penalty.
"But we’ve qualified in that and we need to make sure we qualify in the Carabao Cup and go on a long run in all competitions because this club’s built on winning and we need to start winning trophies.”
Read the interview in full in United Review, the official matchday programme.