Solskjaer reacts to FA Cup win

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer praised his United side's attacking attitude as the Reds secured another famous away win over Arsenal and booked a spot in the Emirates FA Cup fifth round.

The Reds boss spoke to MUTV and reporters at his post-match press conference after making it eight wins from his eight games in charge and discussed United's brilliant counter-attacking football and also a solid defensive display. Here's what he had to say...

I trust all the players

“[It helps] when you’ve got good players, but it’s also difficult to leave them out, it’s much easier to put them into the team. It’s hard because you have to think we have the best goalkeeper in the world in David [De Gea]. Do you leave him in just because it’s a big game? No, because you have to trust all the players in this club.”

Attitude was fantastic

“It was a fantastic finish [from Alexis for the first goal] and a great pass from Rom [Lukaku] I have to say. Just before that I’d said ‘Rom you should be in the box!’ [Smiles] But then he makes that pass which was fantastic. The second and third goals were classic Man United counter-attacks. We had to defend properly which we did today and really had to dig in, we had a much better structure than we did against Tottenham. We defended resiliently and the attitude to run forward was fantastic.”

Massive step forward

“The structure in the team was miles better compared to the Tottenham game where we hung in there and David [De Gea] saved us. Tonight Sergio [Romero] had a fantastic save at the beginning of the second half, but we’d been working on things this week because we need to dig in and defend properly against good teams. This was a massive step forward for us as a team.”

Counter-attacking is what we do against Arsenal

“That’s part of it. If you go through the history and the games we’ve played against Arsenal that’s how it is. I remember a goal I scored in 1997 after we defended a corner; it went from Giggsy to Karel [Poborsky] to Andy [Cole] and into me. Everyone knows about the classic Champions League goal [in 2009] with Ji [-sung Park], Cristiano [Ronaldo] and Wayne [Rooney] running forward. Wazza has scored a couple more like that, as has Ji, so the counter-attacking threat that we have is in our history against Arsenal.”

Romelu on the right

“Rom has played there for Belgium and for Everton, it was against Arsenal actually a few years back, and he played there in the World Cup against Brazil so that’s a tactic we can use. We know how strong he is coming in at the back post if we can get crosses in which we didn’t actually manage to do tonight, but he held the ball and ran the channel and brought other players into play and it was a fantastic pass for Alexis’s goal. And it was a great finish from Alexis.”

Shaw did well for the second goal

“He’s just walking into the interview! [Laughs] He was fantastic. You saw for the second goal, instead of just panicking and clearing the ball, he took a touch and drove inside and set up Rom [who set up Jesse]. He did brilliantly.”

Alexis will keep improving

“The more confidence you have as a player the more you want to get onto the pitch, train, work hard and you also trust yourself. He’s been injured lately so it was great to see him get 65/70 minutes tonight and he can only improve and I think he knows that himself.”

Jesse is a big-game player

“He’s shown that for England and he’s shown that for us. He always pops up with goals and he is someone we never ever hesitate to put in a Man United team. And he’s been brought through the system so he knows what this means, he knows the history, he knows everything about the club and he’s someone we love.”

It’s good to celebrate

“The way the players celebrate shows they’re happy. It might be the last goal you ever score so you should celebrate every single one as though it’s the last one.”

Home draw would be nice

“Tonight we’ve beaten one of the favourites and if you want to win this tournament you need one or two proper performances and today was a fantastic one. It would be nice to get a home draw in the next round now. The fans were fantastic and towards the end you could only hear them. Once again they can enjoy the trip back to Manchester! [Smiles]”