Solskjaer tells Ighalo, others what to do against Leicester on final day
Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has urged Nigeria’s Odion Ighalo and teammates not to settle for the point that would guarantee their progress to the Champions League next season when the Red Devils travel to Leicester.
United sit third in the Premier League table deading into the final day of the season, but defeat at the King Power on Sunday would see them fall to fifth should Chelsea avoid losing at home to Wolves.
“We’ve given ourselves a good chance of being in the Champions League next year but we can’t go into a game thinking about what the outcome can be,” Solskjaer said on Friday.
“We’ve just got to go and perform and perform at a high enough level and standard so we can get a result.
“We want to go there and dominate the game. We wanted to get this position to be able to go to Leicester and having to beat them and we’re not going to change our approach. We want to go there and try and win the game.”
Solskjaer’s men have overturned an eight-point deficit to Leicester in eight games since English football’s return from a three-month hiatus, but have looked low on energy in recent games as they crashed out of the FA Cup to Chelsea last weekend and were held 1-1 at home by West Ham on Wednesday.
However, the Norwegian insists he is still delighted with the progress that has been made this season with his side on a 13-match unbeaten run in the league stretching back to January.
“We’re going to go into it with a strong frame of mind. It’s not job done, we have got to this point and we have one more game in this season,” added Solskjaer.
“That’s this season, this is a journey for this team. This is one extra step on the journey for this team, which we’ve come a long way.
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“Mentally I think we’ve shown more robustness, resilience, when we’ve lost the first goal in games, for example, but we’ve also shown the heights when everything’s flowing, which you can’t expect every time.
“I’m delighted with how the development looks.”