Friday 28 April 2017 00:48, UK
Jose Mourinho insists Manchester United's point at Manchester City could prove vital in their quest for Champions League qualification, despite missing the chance to leapfrog their rivals into fourth.
A goalless draw at the Etihad Stadium ensured United remained fifth in the Premier League, a point adrift of City who occupy the final qualification spot for Europe's elite club competition.
United, who stretched their unbeaten league run to 24 games, have a further five top-flight games and their Europa League campaign to seal their return to the Champions League, with the first leg of their semi-final with Celta Vigo in a week's time.
And, after his injury-plagued squad clung on for a point following Marouane Fellaini's red card, Mourinho demanded similar resilience in their forthcoming fixtures.
"People were focused on the points difference between us and Manchester City but I think people forgot to look at the distance to Liverpool," Mourinho told Sky Sports. "This point can be a very important point for us.
"We play our lives on Thursday at Celta Vigo because you have to consider that the most important match of the season when you reach a European semi-final.
"But against Swansea [on Sunday] with the support of Old Trafford, and with 24 matches unbeaten, we go and try and fight until the end.
"We have new-found resilience. Today we showed exactly that against a good, strong team that wants to win the match at home, playing with 10 men without midfield players on the bench to make any kind of change.
"I played [Timothy] Fosu-Mensah in that extreme situation because I didn't have anyone else.
"The team is in trouble, the team had a lot of trouble in presenting a team to play a big derby like this one but the way we did it shows resilience and big character from the players."
The 174th meeting between Manchester's top two clubs appeared to be meandering towards an underwhelming end before Fellaini provided some late drama.
The Belgium international was shown a straight red card for throwing his head at Sergio Aguero, seconds after his second rash challenge on the Argentine.
Asked to pass comment on Fellaini's dismissal, the Portuguese added: "I don't say because I didn't watch.
"I spoke with Marouane, he feels very disappointed. I spoke with Martin Atkinson and he said, in his opinion, it was a red card.
"I didn't watch but I can guess that it's half red card and half very experienced, smart Argentinian player."
United posed a serious threat to City in an evenly-match first-half, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Ander Herrera failing to convert decent chances to break the deadlock.
However, after the interval, the absence of injured midfielder Paul Pogba was greatly felt as Mourinho admitted his men were overrun by City.
"We wanted to do more in terms of attacking," Mourinho added. "We wanted to explore more on the counter attack.
"We did that in the first half, where we controlled the game but in the second half things were more difficult. We had one player less so we had to make the right decision to fight hard to get a point.
"City started strong, they pushed hard and started higher. Then we were not able to have the ball and to move the ball well.
"I promise not to speak about the players that are not playing. I prefer to say that the quality of the players on the pitch, especially the ones in midfield, we missed a little bit of quality to start moving the ball from the back to connect with the attacking players.
"We were direct in the first half, we explored a few good position behind their defences where they only stopped us by foul from Otamendi and Kompany, fouls the referee didn't give because they were really clever on it.
"In the first half we were always dangerous, not with big occasions although we had a couple, but with movements that could be the start of something important.
"In the second half we didn't have that, we lost too many balls and City were stronger than us."
