Manchester United Wednesday night had a disappointing home game a 1-1 draw with West Ham United.
The score line sees the hommer at the third position ahead of fellow contenders, Chelsea and Leicester City.
The crunch match for Manchester United will be on Sunday when they are away to Leicester City in what could be their final finish decider.
As the current season hit the home stretch Manchester Uinited Boss, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, has identified former Super Eagles forward, Odion Jude Ighalo and Portuguese star player, Bruno Fernandes as the key to the team’s rise to the top four quest this season.
After Wednesday night’s outing against struggling West Ham United to push the former European champions to torching distant to make the top-four finish and play in the UEFA Champions League next football season, the club manager admitted that the duo added resilience to the club’s adventure in the second half of the season.
“I think we’ve grown over the whole season,” Solskjaer told reporters.
“The additions of Odion, Bruno and Paul coming back, (plus) Marcus coming back is a strength for us. We are better as a group and more robust and resilient.
“The proof is in the pudding and we’ll have to see on Wednesday how they perform,” he remarked ahead of the match last night at Old Trafford.
The Reds tasted their first defeat in all competitions last Sunday in a 1-3 loss to Chelsea at the Wembley Stadium in the second semi final of FA Cup but had maintained a 13-match unbeaten run in the league restart.
Manchester United were defeated for the first time since January, in all competitions, in Sunday’s Emirates FA Cup semi-final tie with Chelsea, but will be looking to extend our unbeaten run to 14 league games when we face West Ham United on Wednesday, and Leicester City on Sunday.
Avoiding defeat in final match away to Leicester City will be enough for Champions League football slot next season, and the manager believes his winter signings – coupled with the return from injury of Paul Pogba and Marcus Rashford – have been vital in helping us close what was a significant gap to our top-four rivals.
The disappointing 3-1 reverse to Chelsea at Wembley at the weekend put paid to hopes of a first domestic trophy for Solskjaer, although silverware could still arrive by way of next month’s Europa League.
Ahead of a massive five days for United, the boss said that his side need to react to the setback of defeat, as they have before, and get a positive result over West Ham at Old Trafford, which will see us leapfrog Leicester going into the final-day showdown at the King Power Stadium.
“When you lose a game, you’re hurt and disappointed,“ he admitted. ”You’ve just got to focus on the next thing.
“A defeat isn’t the end of the world – it was the end of the FA Cup dream and the final, but now it’s business as usual and onto the next game.
“We’ve had so many setbacks as a club before. We’ve lost big games before and we’ve turned that around and that’s what we need to do now.”
