‘At the moment we face Midtjylland, the current champions of Denmark, now third in their league. “But first and foremost, it’s an important three points for Sunderland”.
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United now sit fifth in the Premier League table, six points behind fourth-placed Manchester City.
But it was the manner of the performance against Manchester United – similar to that which saw them lose 1-0 to Manchester City at the beginning of the month – which is filling everyone connected with the club with greater optimism.
“Sometimes when you are performing like we are then you don’t want the break, but the break is coming and we cant do anything about that now”.
United players need to have the right mentality going into these games and not to just dismiss it as a rookie competition which many players do. “I am not thinking like that”. He probably ought to have done better with Khazri’s goal, but made amends quickly with a superb save to deny N’Doye who was through on goal.
Sam Allardyce has added power, cohesion and shape to Sunderland, but neither of their goals would have been scored if the visitors had had a good centre-half.
“We didn’t play well, we weren’t aggressive, we didn’t win enough second balls, we didn’t defend well and didn’t create enough chances”, Rooney said.
“They have come in and have looked like they really want to be here, which is not always the case. He’ll be a big asset, you can see us scoring a lot more goals from set pieces”.
“I’m okay after the three matches. They are very capable in Europe, and they will be motivated for these two games”, the ex-Chelsea man explained. I hope the answer is yes.
“I don’t think anyone expected us to get the result today based on the form of Manchester United in 2016”. Thankfully, we took full advantage of kicking off early. They started the game very positively as they putting a lot of pressure on the home side through a series of shots and corners, in the first 10 minutes United had 19 corners but they failed to score from even one of them.
“We’re not quite into the territory of having to win back-to-back matches at this stage”, said Allardyce, whose side fought back to draw 2-2 at Liverpool last weekend.
“The only way to get to a better position is by working hard for the next game”, Mata wrote in his weekly blog.
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Every other fixture, even West Ham, Southampton, Everton, Leicester and Stoke, are winnable.
