OLE GUNNAR SOLSKJAER is uneasy at the thought of letting players leave Manchester United following rumours Inter have expressed an interest in Ashley Young.
United lost 3-1 at home to bitter rivals Manchester City in the first leg of their EFL Cup semi-final on Tuesday, with the visitors outclassing Solskjaer’s men for most of the match.
The defeat highlighted the glaring deficiencies in United’s squad, with Jesse Lingard, Andreas Pereira, Phil Jones and Victor Lindelof coming in for criticism for their respective performances.
Shortly after the match, rumours began to emerge claiming Serie A leaders Inter are in advanced talks for Young, who has been used as a back-up option for the full-back positions over the past few seasons.
Despite the 34-year-old being out of contract at the end of the season, Solskjaer seemed reluctant to let Young leave this month.
“Tonight’s not the time to talk about players leaving, because we need the players we have in the squad and we’ve got a few months left of this season,” Solskjaer told reporters.
“You’ve got to ask Ash, to be fair. For me it’s about focusing on the next game and tonight [City].”
On the match itself, Solksjaer told Sky Sports: “From their first goal, especially from their second goal, we struggled to get to grips with them.
Good reaction second half, that’s more like it, but first half, until they scored, it was there and back, there and back, no one really dominated. After they scored, we didn’t cope with that setback well enough.
“We didn’t deal with [their tactics] well enough. We know that they can play that way, we’ve seen them do it a few times, I went to see them last year against Chelsea play that way and win 5-0 at the Etihad, so that’s not a surprise.
“They’re good at what they’re doing. The first goal, there’s nothing we can do about it; second goal, it’s a bit sloppy, and the third, we just didn’t recover from those goals.
“At half-time, we could get into their heads a little bit and we did well second half.
We’ve shown before that we’ve been down from a home tie and turned it around, last year against PSG is the latest example for us, so we’ve just got to believe when we go to the Etihad and hope we can put a performance on.”
United return to Premier League action this weekend at home to Norwich City.
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