Smalling Calls For Derby Focus

Chris Smalling says United must use the forthcoming Manchester derby as a source of motivation to overcome the disappointment of exiting the FA Cup at the hands of Chelsea on Easter Monday.

The Reds were beaten 1-0 thanks to Demba Ba’s second half strike at Stamford Bridge, a defeat which ends any ambitions of wining the double and leaves Sir Alex Ferguson’s side with just the Barclays Premier League title to fight for this season.

Obviously disappointed, Smalling is gutted not to reach Wembley but wants his team-mates to get over the result by triumphing in next Monday’s Manchester derby and then sealing the title in style.

“It will take a couple of days to get over this because a lot of us came into it with great confidence and we felt we were going to win this game, Chris told MUTV. “At least we have a good game on Monday but we need to make sure that we rally together and win this title with aplomb.

“Our fans will be right behind us and we need to make sure that we give them a good performance because the second half today was just not good enough.”

Having beaten Sunderland less than 48 hours earlier on Saturday, United were perhaps a little sluggish at Stamford Bridge but did largely control the first half and limited Chelsea to very few chances whilst looking relatively dangerous on the counter attack.

However, with quite a few tired legs on the pitch, the Reds struggled to keep the upper hand and created very few scoring chances, other than two excellent opportunities for Javier Hernandez and substitute Robin van Persie after Ba had broken the deadlock on 49 minutes.

“The dressing room is disappointed,” Smalling explained afterwards. “I think the first half went very well and we were on top, playing some good football so a lot of us are disappointed that we didn’t carry that on into the second half, which wasn’t like us.

“We were very confident that we would score today and judging by our first half performance, we thought we wouldn’t concede either because they didn’t create too many chances - but it was really unlike us not to score.

“In the last half an hour, the game started to stretch which wasn’t ideal for us but before that we felt comfortable as a team and played some good football in the first half. The biggest disappointment is that we didn’t carry that on in the second half. That’s what everyone is really down about.”

Naturally, after defeat, the mind automatically wanders back to Old Trafford when United were 2-0 up in the initial sixth round meeting earlier this month and seemingly cruising towards a semi final date at Wembley - but Smalling says such thinking is futile.

“At the start of the day, we saw this replay as a new challenge and a fresh start but you can’t think about the first leg lead and what might have been. We need to make sure that we remember this next season and do not let it slip again.”