Pogba mantra is that Man United want to ‘catch’ City

Manchester United remain intent on chasing down Premier League leaders Manchester City, according to midfielder Paul Pogba.

City suffered their first defeat in the league this season against Liverpool on Sunday and United’s 3-0 victory over Stoke the following day cut the advantage to 12 points.

It may still be a sizeable margin but after helping maintain United’s 100 per cent start to 2018 with two assists against the Potters (thanks to the protection of the fatigued Nemanja Matic), Pogba is not ready to throw in the towel in the title race just yet.

“Obviously we see Manchester City in front of us and they lost,” he told Sky Sports.

“They are first so we always want to catch them, so it was good that they lost, so for us we have to think about ourselves.

“It’s good that they lose points but we have to go back to winning because we want to catch them again.

“We’re not looking to the past. We’re just looking to the future and the next games.

“We just want to catch City. We just have to focus on ourselves, keep winning and I think we will be okay.”

United eased to three points against struggling Stoke at Old Trafford, though boss Jose Mourinho was not totally satisfied afterwards.

The Potters had three good openings between Antonio Valencia’s opener and Anthony Martial’s strike later in the first half.

Mourinho was far more upbeat about his team’s performance after the interval when Romelu Lukaku added a third.

“I didn’t like the first half, I only like two amazing goals,” Mourinho said.

“But I think we were confident and organised, but a bit slow.

“They had the ball and it was difficult for us to press them. They had more chances than I would have liked them to have had in the first half.

“We scored two amazing goals and for me that was the good thing of the first half.

“Second half, totally different. We missed lots of chances because we accelerate the game. We recover the ball faster, we didn’t let them play.

“In the second half, we played confidently and fast and aggressive and I liked the second half.”

There were positives for stand-in Stoke boss Eddie Niedzwiecki too as he took charge with new manager Paul Lambert in the stands.

Lambert begins work on Tuesday at a team that remain in the bottom three having conceded 50 times in 23 games.

“I thought they showed the new manager some really encouraging signs,” Niedzwiecki claimed.

“It really needs the club to pull together now. There’s been too much negativity, too much.

“As an old manager said to me, if they are all pulling the bell in the same way then the bell will ring. If they are not pulling the bell the same way, it won’t ring and then you’ve got a problem. End of story.”