Sir Alex: We Must Recover

Sir Alex Ferguson has challenged his players to start another winning streak after the 1-0 FA Cup semi-final defeat to City.

The Reds were beaten by Yaya Toure's goal and any hopes of a comeback receded when Paul Scholes was dismissed with 18 minutes remaining.

Sir Alex felt his team paid the price for a 'sloppy' start to the second half but appreciates the need to focus on getting three points from a tough trip to Tyneside in a few days' time.

"It's a major game on Tuesday up at Newcastle," he told MUTV. "We're getting recovered to get ready for the game on Tuesday. It doesn't matter when you play, you know you've got to recover and get on a winning streak again.

"The first 15 minutes after half time cost us the game," admitted the boss. "Slack moments. Edwin [van der Sar] had a bad kick out and Michael Carrick couldn't hold it and it was a goal.

"From then on, they were defending apart from a couple of counter-attacks. It's disappointing as we should've been ahead in the first half as we were the better team.

"The chance that Dimitar [Berbatov] missed - there was a great save by the keeper but the second chance, from under the bar, if he'd have scored there, I had a feeling whoever scored first would win the match.

"We were a wee bit sloppy and it got them on the counter-attack against us - that first 15 minutes cost us the game.

"I think the pitch was slow. It's a good pitch but very slow, we like quick pitches and it maybe suited City a bit more than us.

"It [the red card] didn't kill the game. I thought we played better after it. I thought we played very well after the sending off.

"With Paul, we've seen it over his career. He's had unbelievable moments and is a great player, one of the greatest ever at this club. But he has these red mist moments and this was another one. He's a bit unfortunate maybe as he went for for the ball and it bounced up and he's gone through and caught the boy on the thigh."