Manchester United striker Anthony Martial was injured in the warm-up and forced to sit out the Europa League clash with Midtjylland at Old Trafford on Thursday night.
Advertisement
Up next for the Red Devils is a Europa League second leg game against Midtjylland at Old Trafford, in which they need to turn around 2-1 deficit to progress to the round-of-sixteen.
United coasted into a home quarter-final against West Ham thanks to first-half goals from Chris Smalling and Juan Mata, followed by a third from Jesse Lingard just after the hour mark.
And Van Gaal believes his players can learn even more from their opponents.
A successful campaign in the Europa League is United’s best hope of securing Champions League qualification next season.
“Hopefully, with our offering, van Gaal and the United team will be “scoring” regularly”.
Asked if matching Midtjylland’s desire would be key for United, Van Gaal said on Wednesday: “You are right, you are right – your word is fantastic: desire”. “The players have to use their tools to ignore it. It should not be an influencing subject”.
“Also we’re still fifth in the league and we can still finish in the top four at the end of the season”. I think they have a lot of qualities. That’s why I have already said that we have to move the ball very quickly.
The Midtjylland players shall be excited and it will be the match of their lives for a lot of them.
“I think Midtjylland has a very good organisation, very detailed and the players want to perform that organisation”.
Advertisement
“Everybody shall say it is against Shrewsbury Town and Manchester United has to win but we have seen very hard results in the FA Cup”, he added.
