Ole excited by ‘fantastic’ Blues draw
OLE Gunnar Solskjaer says the derby League Cup semi-finals will be ‘fantastic’ for Manchester but has hinted that United could change their approach against City.
The Reds were drawn with City in the last four last night after they beat League Two team Colchester United at Old Trafford, and will host City on January 7 or 8.
Although United have not beaten the Blues at home since April 2015, they have won two of the last three at the Etihad and drew widespread praise for their 2-1 victory at the champions earlier this month.
“Fantastic days in Manchester,” Solskjaer said of the draw. “We do really respect them and, as I said after the derby last time, it’s in my opinion the best team in England. They can out-football you. So we need to get our game heads on and be ready for them again, but we’ve shown them as well we can cause them problems, So it’ll be two fantastic games.
“We’ve looked at that game [this month] and are very pleased with the result, and parts of that game. There are things we need to do so much better.
“The first 10 minutes I was like, you close your eyes and you think ‘we’ve just got to hang in there’. So we’ve got to stamp our authority more on them. There aren’t many that can do but we have to aim for that and strive for that.
“And you won’t beat City twice in a row or three times with the same tactics, so we’ll have to do something better than we did last time because I’m sure Pep will definitely have his team fired up.”
United failed to score in the first half against Colchester before three goals from Marcus Rashford, Anthony Martial and an own goal in 10 minutes shortly after the restart secured victory. Solskjaer still felt United were superior in the goalless half.
“I thought we played well in the first half but we were wasteful,” he added. “We played miles better in the first half than the second half, but we scored and in games like this you need a first goal to settle any doubts and it’ll flow more.
“But we did okay actually, they kept a clean sheet against Palace and Tottenham, and we knew they’d be hard to break down, and in the end the first time they really went for it, with the counterattack, that settled everything.”