Rooney’s clinical finish after Marouane Fellaini’s header from a corner rattled the Liverpool crossbar was United’s first shot on target.
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Manchester United manager, Louis van Gaal, has insisted that the Red Devils are still in the Premier League title race following Sunday’s 1-0 win at Liverpool.
The club now sits in fifth place in the table, with just 28 goals scored in 22 games, seven points adrift of Arsenal at the summit.
After beating Liverpool at Anfield on Saturday, commentators began to mention the fact that Van Gaal has now managed to overcome United’s great rivals every single time they’ve met in the Premier League since he joined the club.
Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson is not confident of Champions League qualification after his side failed to beat Manchester United at home. “Today it was important because our competitors lost points and when the gap [at the top] is like this we can overturn that”.
“Van Gaal is very keen on telling us that they have done what they have trained, so praising himself”, said Schmeichel.
“We lost in a derby against Manchester United so I can’t be very positive at this moment so soon after the game”.
Stoke, having already beaten Manchester United, Chelsea and Manchester City at home this season, had the better of the game without creating clear chances and Mark Hughes’ men could not break the deadlock. Yes, United won the match, but it’s probably not sustainable or realistic for them to continue to play so poorly and get all three points. “It’s easy to say with another player we would have scored, but we should not think about it because we don’t have other players”.
“Maybe we had better opportunities to score, they (Stoke) played very well”, Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger told BBC Sport.
In truth, United’s performance at Liverpool wasn’t all that different from what we’ve seen from them most of the season. “I think the smallest of all our problems that we had today was our centre-forward”.
“It’s really bad”, he said. “We have done better than years before at this ground and showed we can fight even when we miss certain players”.
Fans of Jurgen Klopp’s team will feel it was against the run of play as they had the majority of play and had it not been for the excellent David De Gea it might well have been a different story.
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But he added that he doesn’t care “too much about that the situations” where De Gea could make saves, instead choosing to focus on “the situation where we could have had chances and we didn’t because this move, this pass [was the wrong one]”.
