Manchester United Fell Short of Comeback, Liverpool Cruises to Title

The Manchester Derby

The derby between Man City and Man United is one of the most anticipated games in England. This year both clubs have had their glory against one another. Man Utd won at City 2-1 back in December and Man City got revenge 3-1 in the league cup semifinal first leg 3-1.

For their third meeting, Man Utd was hoping for a comeback to reach the league cup final in Wembley. The Red Devils ultimately fell short, winning 1-0 but not sufficient with the two legs combined (3-2 for City on aggregate). 

United coach, Solkjaer on the result:

“It’s hard to come here and score with 11, never mind 10”, said the coach. United finished down to 10 players when Matic got sent off. 

“It’s never a sending off. It’s ironic, for me, that he gets a yellow card on his first foul and then nearly for his second – which wasn’t even a foul. And, yeah, the last one is a yellow card. But how many times did they foul us? How many times was Dan James fouled and in the first half, Jesse [Lingard]? For me, that’s the first question and it shouldn’t be like this because I’m so proud of these players. They’ve beaten City twice in six weeks at their place. They’ve come, so far, these boys, and they’ve given us absolutely everything.”

“The boys have come a long way. They’ve given absolutely everything. They’ve developed – I think, in the first half, even though we didn’t create too many clear-cut chances, we pressed them back and had spells where we were attacking and we had spells where they were defending deep, which pleased me.

Liverpool sets dates for Premier League title

Liverpool moves one step closer to the Premier League title win another solid win, this time at West Ham 2-0. Now with the schedule up-to-date, the future champions enjoy a 19-point lead over second Manchester City and just 14 games to play. If you do the math, Liverpool needs 24 more points to be crowned should Man City wins all their games until the end. It’s a done deal.

“We won against 18 different teams in the league, so let’s make it 19′. How I said, you have to dig in [during a season]. The best way is you don’t breathe pretty much or you jump in the water, don’t breathe and then come out after 38 games and then you have a look what happened there. It’s difficult enough because we are not underwater”. 

Challenge to reach 100 points

“Last year we had 97 points and I am not sure if we could have had 100 – 98 would have been possible if we had got a point at [Manchester] City. No, I didn’t do it so far and in the moment I see I have a problem with motivating the boys, then I would have to use different things – but so far it is not necessary. We are Liverpool and we have a proper history, everybody knows what we have to do and the motivation is to reach that and not any point records. If that would happen as a side-effect, we would take it, but we are not overly concerned about it”.