Ole Gunnar Solskjær has urged his Manchester United side to embrace the challenge of qualifying for next season’s Champions League after a hard-fought victory over Crystal Palace.
Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial took their combined tally for the season to 44 goals as they scored either side of half-time at Selhurst Park to ensure United remain a point behind fourth-placed Leicester with two games to play following the earlier victory for Brendan Rodgers’s side against Sheffield United. United face Chelsea in the FA Cup semi-final on Sunday at Wembley before rounding off their Premier League campaign at home to West Ham in midweek and travelling to the King Power Stadium on the final day.
But having now gone 19 games unbeaten in all competitions to surge into contention for the top four – a run that stretches back until January – Solskjær admitted their destiny is now in his players’ hands.
“We need to smile and go into this, we have earned this right,” he said. “No one thought in January that we would be in with a shout for top four. We have done fantastic since the restart. These are the games that matter. That is the thing at Manchester United, you have to step up and show your personality.”
The Palace chairman, Steve Parish, questioned the decision not to award Wilfried Zaha a penalty after he appeared to be fouled by Victor Lindelöf just before Rashford opened the scoring, but Solskjær insisted the referee, Graham Scott, had made the correct call and praised his side’s resilience.
“Today was about getting three points again,” he added. “We’re at that stage of the season where you don’t get extra points for how it looks.”
Writing on Twitter, Parish compared the decision not to award Palace a penalty to a disallowed goal from Mamadou Sakho in last week’s loss to Aston Villa: “Is the VAR broken? Serious question. How can they look at Sakho ‘handball’ for minutes to make their ‘mind up’ and not even give that a glance! It’s a stonewall nailed on penalty even the most one eyed Man U fan knows it.”
Jordan Ayew also had a goal disallowed for a marginal offside when United led 1-0 and Roy Hodgson admitted he is no fan of technology after Palace’s sixth straight defeat.
“I’m still finding it hard to come to terms with it all,” he said. “It’s not helping my feelings during the game or after the game having to stand here and talk about these type of things.”