Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has insisted his Man Utd can ‘bounce back’ from their shock Champions League defeat to Young Boys, and says he has not been surprised by the public aftermath of the loss.
Manchester United were handed one of the easier Champions League draws for the Group stage, being pulled out of the hat to face Villarreal, Atalanta and Young Boys..
They would take the lead in their Tuesday night encounter against the Swiss champions, though the game would turn on its head following Aaron Wan-Bissaka’s first half red card, with the Red Devils struggling to make an impact on the rest of the game, with Young Boys scoring a 95th minute winner.
Speaking ahead of their weekend fixture against West Ham, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer said his side were ‘not too downbeat’ by the defeat, and backed his side to ‘bounce back’ in their remaining five fixtures.
“Of course you wait to see when you see them this morning when you come back in,” he said at his pre-match press conference. “The attitude is like you expect it to be.
“They’re focussed of course, a little bit disappointed but not too downbeat we know it’s a setback and we have to do better and we’ve got five games to get 10 to 12 points we need. Not the start we wanted but we’re a good team that can bounce back again and the group is very good.”
There has been plenty said and written about Solskjaer and his side in the aftermath to the defeat, with the Norwegian’s pre-match team selection and subsequent substitutions being scrutinised.
The Red Devils looked on course to be heading for an uninspiring yet hard-fought draw until Jesse Lingard’s slack back pass was pounced upon in the dying seconds, and Solskjaer suggested that the entire narrative of the reaction changed upon that outcome, although he accepted his side’s overall display wasn’t up to scratch.
“No, [the reaction] doesn’t surprise me,” he said. “I’ve got my job and we do our job, You tend to, in the media, get judged by behaviours and outcomes rather than intentions. It’s black and white.
“But we go into the game with good intentions, we make changes with good intentions, go into a tackle and make a pass with good intentions.
“The outcome always decides which headline we’ll see and very very rarely is the game fantastic or really really bad, it just hovers about good or not good enough.
“We know the expectations are high and we expect more of ourselves as well, the performance wasn’t up to our standard.”
