Man United loses 2-1 at Sunderland after late own goal

Van Gaal has challenged his team to put together a series of wins to break into the top four and ease the considerable pressure on his shoulders.

United dominated the final stages of the first half, but other than that they were matched or outplayed by Sunderland, who could have scored more.

And the manager was resigned to admit the result leaves their top four hopes in the balance. I don’t want to say anything about injuries but we have a group of 26 players and we have 11 injured players or very exhausted players.

United travels to Denmark to face FC Midtjylland in the first leg of its UEFA Europa League last-32 clash on Friday (AEDT).

Former Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho remains at 1/5 favourite to be the next permanent manager of United as he continues to search for a new role following his departure from Stamford Bridge in December. “I have said many times that not all the media, but a lot of media, is inventing stories and you don’t have to answer on invented stories”, he added.

“The Europa League is easier for us but also not so [easy] because there is a fantastic level of European football in that cup”.

On Valentine’s weekend it was appropriate that Manchester United gave a league debut to their young Scottish defender Donald Love.

“He (Darmian) will be out for several weeks”, Van Gaal said. “I have to do my work and to my utmost best I can not do more and prepare my players on Thursday to 100 per cent as always”.

“We didn’t play well today, we know that, we didn’t win enough second balls and all that coming together has cost us and it is not good enough”. We know in advance that they could score from set plays.

The victory boosted second-from-bottom Sunderland’s survival hopes and left United looking down rather than up as Southampton closed to within a point of them in sixth after Shane Long’s goal sealed a 1-0 win at Swansea City.

“I don’t think Man United are any further forward now to what they were when he [Van Gaal] took over”, the 45-year-old told Match of the Day.