Manchester United under their interim manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer made it eight wins on the bounce since taking over from Jose Mourinho after beating Arsenal 3-1 at the Emirates Stadium this evening. A frantic 12-minute period in the first half saw United score twice and the Gunners net once before the visitors made sure of the win with a late strike.
Alexis Sanchez apologised to his former fans for netting against them to open the scoring on 31 minutes and then Jesse Lingard added a second two minutes later.
Before the break, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang pulled one back for the home side to give them hope but a goal from Anthony Martial eight minutes from time secured the Red Devils’ safe passage.
The result means that United have won every single game under the Norwegian since losing to Liverpool on 16 December, Mourinho’s last game in charge.
And it now appears Solskjaer has a selection headache to deal with due to his attacking stars all knowing how to find the back of the net at present.
“It’s fantastic to go through in the cup. It’s one of the hardest games you can get. I’ve had a [selection] headache since I came because the squad is full of good players. It’s up to us to pick the right tactics and players. We need to rest a few as there’s big games coming up. But we have fresh legs. Today we looked more like a proper team. We looked more structured,” he told BBC Sport.
“We’d worked hard at defending and counter-attacking. Counter-attacking is classic Manchester United – Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo, Ji Sung-park – we’ve scored so many at Arsenal over the years. Today was a big step forward. It was a massive improvement from the Tottenham game. It’s easy to get excited and talk about the future but we need to just keep working and think about the next game. We had to dig deep. The attitude and work-rate was important. Towards the end it was comfortable but not during the 90 minutes.”
