Manchester United interim boss Ralf Rangnick has backed his team to respond valiantly, despite bowing out of the Emirates FA Cup against Middlesborough at Old Trafford.
The Reds had taken a first-half lead thanks to Jadon Sancho’s maiden home goal, but with Matt Crooks levelling things up midway through the second half, it was Chris Wilder’s side who progressed to round five, thanks to their 8-7 victory in a marathon penalty shootout.
With United quickly returning to action in just three days’ time, Rangnick believes the only aspect missing from his side’s performance was the ability to find the back of the net.
”I think we have played well in the last couple of weeks, in the league and also today in the first half,” began the 63-year-old.
”I don’t think we could have done a lot of things a lot better, apart from scoring more goals in the first half.”
We have to take our chances better with more quality than we did today.”
Cristiano Ronaldo missed a penalty that would have opened the scoring before Sancho did and with Bruno Fernandes hitting the post late on, our interim boss felt those were the finite differences between going out and going through.
”The chance that Bruno had, if he had 10 chances like that in a game, he would score nine of them.”
Today he hit the post and I think he tried to place that ball almost too accurately into the corner of the goal.”In the end things like that can happen.
Of course he didn’t do that on purpose and for now our full focus must go on the other two competitions.”