Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was delighted with how Manchester United controlled the game in their 3-0 win over Fulham this afternoon.
United moved into the top four for the first time since the opening weekend of the season thanks to a Paul Pogba brace and a fine Anthony Martial solo goal, with the Red Devils having overhauled the 11 point deficit that they faced when Solskjaer took over less than two months ago.
However, with the highly anticipated clash against PSG on the horizon on Tuesday, the Norwegian made six changes to the starting XI from the team that beat Leicester last week, with the in-form Marcus Rashford an unused substitute.
Speaking to Sky Sports after the game, Solksjaer admitted that while it was a ‘risk’ to make so many changes, he was delighted with the way his rotated side played.
“There is always an element of risk (with team changes) but if you don’t risk you don’t win. I have to trust the players, I didn’t feel there was a problem playing any of them. They put us under pressure in the first 10 minutes but after we scored I thought we were excellent,” Solskjaer said.
“The most pleasing thing was in the second half, the way we controlled it. We could have had four or five goals, it was different to what we did against Leicester so another improvement.
“We wanted Ander [Herrera] further down to control it more. We know about Paul’s quality going forward and what a strike it is. The second one with Anthony [Martial], we know his qualities.”
Pogba opened the scoring with a powerful left-footed strike after 14 minutes, before coolly dispatching a second-half penalty to take his tally to 11 league goals for the season, with eight of them coming under Solskjaer, and the caretaker boss was asked how he is getting the best form out of the £89 million man.
“I’ve not released those, he is playing to his potential, we are trying to put the team forward to put players in positions to where they can hurt teams,” Solskjaer replied.
“Paul can do that with his qualities. I speak to him like I do with the others, that’s management. He’s responding to the way we do things.”
