**On United and how they have changed under Michael Carrick…**
I think last season when we played them, they were not in the same league position as they are now. Then, I also said that their players are much better than the league position shows and another time, another transfer window adding a lot of players and that has resulted, I would almost say finally, in that we now see how good their players are, in terms of looking at the league table. We always knew that they were really good, but now they are also showing it in the league table. It might be a bit of an advantage that they only play once a week. But as I said, when we played them every single time, I saw before we played, in the lead-up to the game, analysing them, how good they are. And every time we played, I felt the same. And now they have become, especially under Michael Carrick, more consistent in their results.
**On how the Reds can convert more chances…**
Having Alex \[Isak\] more and more available. Having him available at his top level would even increase that even more. In general, having players available would help in becoming consistent. At the moment, not playing three times in seven days helps in our consistency. But indeed, chance creation, converting into goals, that is something we haven’t done very well throughout this whole season. But one of the players that we always thought could score a lot of goals for us has hardly been available. And you could see last week that it was a chance but it wasn’t the biggest chance we’ve got this season, and he finished that one off really well, Alex, by scoring the 1-0.
And scoring a goal is vital in football because that sets you in the right direction. Or if you don’t score it and you concede a set-piece at the other end, which happened so many times in the first half of the season, that brings the game towards a different direction. So, happy to have Alex back. Unfortunately, Mo is, of course, another great goalscorer for so many years – he’s not available on Sunday, but Alex is. And I think some other players that haven’t scored the amount of goals that I think they are able to or they’ve shown in the past also that they’re able to, that will go back to normal in a certain moment and the sooner the better.
**On if the team ‘is back performing at the level he would expect now’…**
No. No, I think we can be on a much higher level than we are now. If you simply look at the results then we can be very positive, it’s three wins out of three games \[in the league\]. But performance-wise, I don’t think it has been our three best performances of this season. So, we can play much better. We’ve shown already that we can play much better. But in many of these games we were very unlucky with the outcome of the game. I think in the last three games, I wouldn’t say we did not deserve to win, but we were more lucky than we’ve ever been this season.
So, this team is capable of much more, but it would be helpful if everyone is available once in a while as well, and that hasn’t been the situation throughout the whole season. And that’s very extreme at the moment, the amount of players we are missing. The good thing is that we only play once a week, which I would prefer not to have. I would have preferred to play the Champions League semi-final during the week, but since that’s not the case, that means that the players that constantly have to play are a bit better rested in the games in the weekends. But no, I think we can be much better than we’ve played recently.