Charitable Reds irk Sir Alex

Sir Alex Ferguson admits United’s charity in front of goal is concerning him, following Saturday’s unexpectedly tight victory over Derby County.

The Reds passed up chance after chance at Pride Park, just as they did in last weekend’s FA Cup defeat to Portsmouth, and the manager concedes it is beginning to irk him.

“Last Saturday, of course, it (missing chances) knocked us out of the cup,” he told MUTV. “Today we made it hard for ourselves because we missed so many chances.

“We were really charitable - it was a lot of chances. Maybe it’s a little sticky spell, but we want to get over that. We’ve got big games, Bolton at home on Wednesday and then Liverpool on Sunday, so they’re important games coming up and we want to start taking chances.

“We are making them, and I suppose that’s the biggest bonus of all. If we keep making them, you know at some point someone’s going to suffer. We just have to keep going with that.”

Cristiano Ronaldo was repeatedly thwarted at Pride Park before eventually bagging the winning goal with 14 minutes remaining, and Sir Alex was quick to salute the ease with which the winger converted a potentially difficult finish.

“We needed something special and Ronaldo’s taken his chance very, very well. It’s not easy when it comes off the turf like that and he connected really well to score a really important goal for us. He had to control it to keep it down, it was a very good finish.”

United host Bolton on Wednesday before Liverpool’s visit on Easter Sunday and, after omitting Rio Ferdinand, Nani, and Carlos Tevez from Saturday’s squad, Sir Alex admits there will be changes for those games.

“I think that we’ll be changing on Wednesday again, but not too much,” he said. “We wanted to win this game and be top of the league. We’ve got our game in hand, we want to get those three points and then we can look forward to a real battle against Liverpool.”