Match report
Time to sign off for today – I’ll leave you with Jamie Jackson’s match report from Old Trafford, and we’ll have more reaction and analysis to come on The Guardian dot com. Thanks for joining me, and enjoy your evenings.
Here’s Erik ten Hag: “We made a great goal, magnificent. Great cross from Eriksen, and Rashford really hammered his header! Second half, we have to manage it better, that’s clear. It turned into, I call it a tennis match, one end to the other – but we have great defenders, and a great keeper.”
The Manchester United manager bristles slightly at suggestions United were hanging on. “We played Thursday, West Ham rested their team [against Silkeborg], so they had more power in the end. We had to manage the game. The moment for Fred was there, when he hit the post.” He is also not keen to discuss Harry Maguire in detail: “The team do their job – defend the goal – together, as a back four but also, the team defend as 11 players.”
Ten Hag is more effusive on Diogo Dalot. “I’m really happy with his development. He’s growing from game to game, he’s really good in possession” – and Casemiro. “You can see why he wins Champions Leagues. He is the absolute top of world football.” On Ronaldo: “he did quite well – we asked him to drop deeper, make runs and move defenders around.”
What did he make of Pep Guardiola’s claim that United are “coming back”. “The spirit we have is fabulous, we have the quality to score goals. But [to catch City] we have a long way to go.” I quite enjoy these pitchside chats with the pundits getting involved – better than a roll-call of questions from Geoff Shreeves, for me, Clive.
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