Defeat Will Galvanise Us

The Reds may have felt a real sense of injustice as they left Stamford Bridge on Sunday night, but John O'Shea believes the defeat will now inspire a long unbeaten run.

O'Shea admitted to feeling 'terrible' after seeing United lose out to a controversial John Terry goal 14 minutes from time despite dominating for long periods of the game.

The Irishman says the Reds can take heart from their solid display against the Blues and insists it's imperative United hit those heights again over the coming weeks.

"We hate losing games and we know that we now have to go on a great run," O'Shea told MUTV.

"The international break comes at a bit of a bad time - you'd prefer to have another game a few days later to help put the defeat out of your mind. There's a bit of a sour taste left, but hopefully we'll get over that.

"Not many teams come to the Stamford Bridge and dominate games. We had great spells in the game where we had Chelsea really pinned back and we caused them problems on the counter-attack as well, but our final ball or shot just didn't go for us and we were lucky at times as well.

"We stuck to our game plan very well and were the better team.

Unfortunately we didn't get what we deserved."

O'Shea was particularly disappointed by the performance of the match officials who failed to spot Didier Drogba's foul on Wes Brown as Terry headed home Lampard's free-kick, which O'Shea feels should never have been awarded.

"We didn't think it was a foul in the first place [Fletcher on Ashley Cole] - Fletch went in and came out with the ball," he declared.

"The ref's angle of it and the Chelsea players' reaction won them the free-kick. And then Wes was clearly fouled by Drogba as the ball came in. The referee's position was terrible - he was stood right behind one of the Chelsea players and was too far away to see it.

"Lots of decisions seemed to go against us - I crossed the ball towards the end and Lampard clearly stuck his arm up [to block it].

"It was just outside the box, but the linesman was ten yards away and surely had to see it. The little things just didn't go for us and we're very disappointed in that sense."