A lot of fingers have been pointed at Manchester United this season, suggesting they have had a disappointed campaign, but United midfielder Ander Herrera has insisted his side are improving under Jose Mourinho.
The Red Devil’s finished last season down in sixth place in the Premier League, but came away with two trophies in the shape of the League Cup and Europa League.
This season, United are up in second place, and still in consideration to win the FA Cup, although they do have a tricky tie against Tottenham to navigate through in the semi-finals next weekend.
However despite looking almost nailed on to qualify for the Champions league for a second consecutive season – the first time since Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement – some still think its been a bad season, but not Herrera:
“The data is there. It is true that last year we won three titles, but we finished sixth in the Premier League and we had to win the Europa League to qualify for the Champions League.
“You have to put everything in perspective. In England, the Premier League is given more importance than the Champions League and we are up on the previous season. We have done a good job but have found ourselves up against an impeccable opponent (Manchester City).
The Spaniard is right in what he says, despite the obvious disappointment in the Champions League, United could still achieve 89 points in the league, a number which would have been enough to win the title on a number of occasions.
Herrera also played down the importance of winning the Manchester derby last week, saying that the clubs focus isn’t on winning derbies, but winning titles. However he did concede that it was an important victory given the circumstances that a win for City would have gifted them the title:
“United’s history is winning titles, not winning a derby. We have made that clear, but preventing a rival from winning the Premier League has important meaning.
“During the game I thought about those 4,000 fans who were at the Etihad and were going to suffer a setback that would have remained throughout history had we lost.
“No-one should underestimate us. There was no specific talk, just random comments and a collective reaction. We appealed to our pride and everyone tried to correct their mistakes to avoid City becoming champions.”
