小R的天空

United's Reserves have shown the perfect response to their heartbreaking early-October defeat to Wigan, according to manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

The Reds succumbed to a smash-and-grab raid against the Latics, but bounced back with wins over Bolton and Oldham, before a swaggering 3-0 victory at league leaders Manchester City on Wednesday evening.

"Once in a while it’s good for everyone to get a defeat, just to remind you how much it hurts," Ole told MUTV. "They’ve responded really well to that with three wins, so that’s what we’ve asked of them – consistency.

"Of course we’re delighted. You go into local derbies like this and you never know what you’re going to get. We just asked the lads to trust the way they play and trust why they have the red shirt on and keep playing the way we’ve always coached them to do and it paid dividends."

United were already edging a feisty derby when City were reduced to 10 men. Shaleum Logan was red carded for the concession of a penalty which Darron Gibson converted, but Solskjaer felt the dismissal ruined the game.

"When we got the penalty and they went down to 10 men, that spoiled the game a little bit," he said. "After that the game was over, but up until then I thought they did exactly what we asked for. They defended well and worked for each other, and it was perhaps our best performance of the season."

United's defence of the Manchester Senior Cup continued with another solid victory, but the Reds had to come from behind to overturn Oldham Athletic.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's side trailed from the third minute, when Lewis Alessandra converted from close range, but had tellingly turned the scoreline on its head by half-time, thanks to strikes from Matt James and Sam Hewson.

The Reds' starting line-up had a youthful look about it, with the likes of Scott Wootton, Oliver Gill, Cameron Stewart, Jimmy Derbyshire and James in from the off, but England international Ben Foster provided relative experience in goal.

Just three minutes had elapsed when the former Stoke City stopper was beaten, however, as Alessandra pounced on a right-wing cross to nudge the visitors into a shock lead.

Young midfielder Tom Cleverley added another goal to his collection of crackers when he scored for United's reserves against Bolton...

I think we showed good character against Bolton and played very well, certainly in the second half.

Losing to Wigan the week before was a big disappointment but our coaches Ole (Gunnar Solskjaer) and Warren (Joyce) told us all good teams bounce back from defeat and we did just that.

I’ve been asked a number of times what Ole is like as a coach. He asks a lot of us in terms of work-rate but we like that, we like working hard for Ole and Warren. The technical and physical work is helping us all to improve and we’re all looking forward to the rest of the season.

United Reserves claimed a first league win under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer thanks to goals from Federico "Kiko" Macheda, Sam Hewson and Tom Cleverley plus a clean sheet by senior keeper Tomasz Kuszczak.

Macheda making the breakthrough at the end of a poor first half was significant; thereafter, Bolton were comfortably beaten at the County Ground in Leyland, scene of United's Lancashire Senior Cup triumph over Liverpool.

David Gray, a scorer in that final and in last week’s reserve league defeat at Wigan, filled in for James Chester as centre-back and skipper. Gray’s right-back berth was occupied by Rafael while Oliver Gill, an imposing centre-half in the Under-18s, made his reserve league debut at left-back.

The game started at a frenetic pace but the first real chance didn’t arrive until the 9th minute. With Bolton threatening to score, Kuszczak came off his line to dive at the feet of Temitope Obadeyi and when the ball broke to Nathan Woolfe, Richard Eckersley blocked the shot brilliantly.