Ferguson content, Hughes critical

Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson was not left overly impressed with his players despite their 2-0 win over Fulham 2-0 on Saturday.

Dimitar Berbatov and Antonio Valencia both found the back of the net in the first half as last year’s English Premier League runners-up extended their lead atop the table to 10 points.

But despite the routine victory, Ferguson bemoaned his side’s failure to score more goals.

“We’ve got an important win,” Ferguson told Sky Sports.

“At this time of the season that?s the name of the game, (but) we didn’t play well. The players found it a sticky and hot day and we were a bit wasteful with our possession of the ball in the second half.”

“We had great opportunities to add to the goals, of course, but we didn’t take them and then you’re left to sort of hang on a little bit towards the end. We’ve got through an important win with six games left and we carry on.”

“We were lackadaisical today, took chances with the possession at times and tried to be too clever at other times. They got off with it today but they wouldn?t have gotten off with it in another game.”

But while Ferguson was critical of his side’s overall performance, the efforts of attacker Nani drew praise from the Scottish manager.

“Nani, in the first half in particular, did very well,” Ferguson said.

“(He) created a lot of chances today for us. His pace worried them all the time. Some of the stuff (we played) in the first half was very good.”

Fulham manager Mark Hughes cut a disappointed figure after the game, labelling the goals as ‘poor’ and claiming his side played into their opponents’ hands.

“It was a poor goal to concede, the first one, even thought it was offside. We shouldn’t have allowed that situation,” Hughes said.

“We needed to get back into the game quickly but we conceded another poor goal from a comedy of errors and 2-0 down is very difficult for us.”

“We played into United’s hands to be perfectly honest. From their point of view, they could get men behind the ball and they just played counter-attack so it was really difficult for us to break them down and we didn’t have enough ability to ask questions of them.”