Manchester United dressing room reaction to Liverpool draw as Solskjaer’s side stay top

Man Utd: Solskjaer says Pogba is ‘prime example’ of improvement

Manchester United star Harry Maguire has admitted players in the dressing room are sure to be disappointed after their goalless draw with Liverpool at Anfield on Sunday. Both Premier League giants produced a dull affair, with the Red Devils staying top in the aftermath. But Manchester City, if they win their game in hand, will rise above them at the summit.

United went into the match against Liverpool looking to open up a six-point lead over their fierce rivals at the top of the table.

But that didn’t happen, with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side unable to claim all three points.

Liverpool were dominant, for the most part, but it was United who had the biggest chances of the afternoon.

Alisson Becker made two sensational saves to deny Bruno Fernandes and Paul Pogba, ensuring the home side emerge unscathed from the contest.

For United, with Liverpool missing key men such as Joel Matip, Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez, it’s been viewed as a missed opportunity.

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And Maguire, speaking to the club’s official website, has admitted players in the dressing room will be disappointed with settling just for a point.

“Some people will look at it like that but we wanted to win,” he said.

“You could see our intent in the second half, we wanted to go on and get three points.

“I’m sure in the dressing room we will feel a bit disappointed not to come away with three points.

“But like I say, it’s a point at a difficult place to come, but we move on to get a result next week.”

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Maguire thought both teams ‘smashed it’, adding: “It was cagey, but it was two good teams smashing it.

“We found it difficult in the first half to find a rhythm in the game. They pressed us high, we knew they were coming with a lot of intensity off the ball.

”We spoke about that at half time, we didn’t get the rhythm of the ball. It was 0-0 and we thought we could’ve done a lot better.

“The second half was a lot better, we created openings and, like I say, we have great good chances, but two great saves.”

United lost 2-0 to Liverpool in the same fixture a year ago, with Van Dijk and Mohamed Salah both finding the net.

And Maguire is convinced the draw points to progress, saying: “I think you can see from our performance here compared to how it was here last year [that we’ve improved].

“It was a tight and edgy game last year, but we didn’t get on the front foot.

“In the second half we had the intensity to try and win the game. It shows how far we’ve come.

“We’re not getting carried away, we need to improve as well, for sure. We’ll work hard, get on the training pitch and get the three points next game.“

Meanwhile, Solskjaer felt a draw was the right result and admitted he felt United didn’t do enough to win the game.

“We didn’t deserve the three points because we didn’t play well enough,” Solskjaer told Sky Sports.

“We didn’t impose ourselves on the game, especially first half. We grew in the game and thought it was there to win in the second half and created two massive chances.

“We can play better than this, we know that.

“We can be more composed; we can have the ball more.

“We had to defend really often, and we gave the ball away too often. A couple of things we need to improve on.”

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