Ander Herrera tells Man Utd not to obsess about Premier League table
Herrera has told his Manchester United team-mates not to obsess about the Premier League standings at this early stage of the season, despite the club being about to enter a crucial run of fixtures.
United lost ground on some of their title rivals at the weekend after being held to a frustrating 1-1 draw at home to Stoke City. Tottenham Hotspur, who beat leaders Manchester City 2-0 at White Hart Lane, Liverpool and Arsenal all won while Chelsea moved level on points with United after beating Hull City 2-0 on Saturday.
The one bonus for United was that City’s advantage over them was cut from six points to five after the Spurs result. But Herrera is expecting so many twists and turns in the championship race that he believes there is little point in getting caught up about the table ahead of back-to-back league games against Liverpool and Chelsea.
“You never know,” Herrera said when asked if United could ill afford to lose more ground in the games against Liverpool and Chelsea.
“When I was in Spain, I remember United being eight points ahead of City with only six games left [in 2011/12] but they still lost that title. So in the Premier League, anything can happen. You never know because anything can happen whether you are in front or behind the opponent.
“Against Stoke we are very sad because we should clearly have won this game. These are the kind of games we shouldn’t draw at home because we played fantastic. That is why we are not happy.”
Liverpool at Anfield a fortnight on Monday and Chelsea the following Sunday in Jose Mourinho’s first return to Stamford Bridge since being sacked by the West London club last year will provide stiff examinations for United.
Having taken just four points from the last 12 on offer in the Premier League, United are under pressure to build some momentum but Herrera is confident that if they keep playing as well as they did against Stoke then the points will come.
“After the last international break we lost three games in a row so we have to avoid that,” Herrera said. “We have to come back very strong. We have to play two very tough Premier Leagues games away Liverpool and Chelsea and between them Fenerbahce in the Europa League. That is a very important game as well.
“We want to win to be able to face the rest of the group in a calm way. But in football you never know. Maybe we go to Liverpool and create [only] two chances and yet we win the game. This is football and we have to accept that.
“We cannot believe we did not win against Stoke. It was our best performance so far. We created maybe 11 chances. We controlled the game, we tried to play wide, deep as well. We did everything to win. And I hope next time we play as well we can win maybe 6-0.
“We played better than we did [in the 4-1 win] against Leicester. But this is football sometimes. Against Leicester, the first five chances we had, we scored four of them, but against Stoke we created even more and we didn’t convert them.
“When you want to fight for everything these days are more painful but we can take a lot of good things form this game.”