Guernsey Press

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer hails reaction to Milan setback in ‘massive’ week

Manchester United bounced back from the late equaliser they conceded to AC Milan by beating West Ham 1-0.

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Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was pleased to kick off a “massive” week by securing an important Premier League win against high-flying West Ham.

Having impressively triumphed at runaway leaders Manchester City in their last top-flight outing, an own goal by Craig Dawson settled Sunday’s Old Trafford encounter between the Champions League qualification hopefuls.

The 1-0 win was an important boost at the start of a key week for United, who head to Italy on Thursday for the second leg of their Europa League last-16 clash with AC Milan before travelling to Leicester for Sunday’s FA Cup quarter-final.

“It’s been a big week for us,” Solskjaer said, reflecting on the 2-0 win at City and 1-1 draw with the Rossoneri before overcoming West Ham.

“The last few league games, big games near the top of the league and we’re starting to build some momentum in the league. Of course now we opened the gap further to West Ham, which was important for us.

“We want to improve on last season. We want to get to a final, we want to move up the table.

“This week was always going to be massive. The reaction after the disappointment of the late equaliser Milan scored was really good because you never know how that can affect you.

“I thought it looked like everyone wanted to show what they could do in the first 15-20 minutes – maybe a little bit too eager, lacked a bit of composure. Attitude was spot on, though, and then we got the composure, we built more and more pressure and momentum.”

The impressive Mason Greenwood twice hit the post on Sunday and Marcus Rashford had a great chance to score having made a surprisingly swift return from an ankle issue sustained at City.

United’s options are set to increase further in Milan as Solskjaer prepares to welcome back a swathe of options.

“Injury-wise I hope that we have four or five players back for that game,” he said. “Very likely that Edinson (Cavani) and Anthony (Martial) are fit. Donny (Van De Beek) hopefully as well.

“Paul (Pogba) even might make the trip and David (De Gea) is back from isolation, so that’s more numbers. You could see today we even had two goalkeepers on the bench (Lee Grant and Nathan Bishop), so we need them back of course.”

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, right, bumps fists with West Ham’s Vladimir Coufal after the game
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, right, bumps fists with West Ham’s Vladimir Coufal after the game (Dave Thompson/PA)

“I don’t know about (this being a) missed opportunity but what it is was a chance for us to pick up three points, which we didn’t do tonight,” the former Old Trafford boss said.

“Overall I don’t think we did enough to earn it. Overall I wasn’t convinced with the performance tonight.”

David Moyes shows his frustration during the defeat at Old Trafford
David Moyes was frustrated with defeat at Old Trafford (Clive Brunskill/PA)

“We made some changes, we got a little bit better as the game went on. Parts of (the game plan) we did OK but not so well, so I was disappointed with quite a lot of aspects and that’s why we made the changes.”

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