“I’m not saying United will win the title, but they are back in the hunt and we should not write them off”, Redknapp adds, writing Leicester, seven points ahead of Van Gaal’s side, off.
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Now, United is unbeaten in 2016, Rooney can’t stop scoring and Van Gaal is talking optimistically about winning the Premier League after a 1-0 victory at fierce rival Liverpool on Sunday.
“I know we didn’t score a goal”.
This victory completed a second successive league double over Liverpool for van Gaal following United’s 3-1 win at Old Trafford in September. They got the goal and there was not enough time to get back into the game.
On Rooney: “I am very pleased and he is very pleased also”.
In his first game against United as Liverpool manager, Jurgen Klopp saw his team dominate only for Rooney to punish their wastefulness with his fifth goal in four games, a close range snapshot after Marouane Fellaini had hit the bar in the 78th minute proving the difference. “I think this game will give a big boost to players, fans, everyone in the environment of Manchester United”. Sometimes you play well and get beat and now it is about how we react with a home game in the Cup on Wednesday [the Exeter replay] and away to Norwich on Saturday, which will not be easy. I hope it shall continue with winning.
He said: “It’s really bad, it’s a derby and in a derby you only have one job to do – to win it”.
Rooney has now scored in each of his last four games for United, something that he had not achieved since March 2012 before this afternoon.
Rooney broke the record for the most Premier League goals scored for one club, overtaking Arsenal legend Thierry Henry.
He made two excellent saves from Adam Lallana and Emre Can that meant that he kept a much needed clean sheet.
Despite this, Klopp refused to attribute his side’s defeat to the performance of the Spaniard, and instead highlighted Liverpool’s failure to create and convert even more chances than they had.
“I think the smallest of our problems was our centre forward”, Klopp said.
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“We had a lot of these situations in the first half and the second half, so we had our chances but we could have had more if we would have done this better”.
