Juan Mata has urged his Manchester United side to keep the chase with Manchester City at the top of the table, while also admitting the draw with Leicester left a bitter taste and felt more like a defeat.
The Spaniard scored a brace at the King Power Stadium on Saturday as United came from behind to lead 2-1 right into the dying minutes, only to concede a late equalizer against the Foxes that has now left them 13 points adrift of high-flying Manchester City but Mata believes they still have to keep the spirit going.
“You have to keep going, especially in Christmas time, we play every two or three days,” said Mata.
“Of course now we feel frustrated and angry but we need to be calm, rest and think about the next game and hope to finish the game with a much better feeling.
“We didn’t kill it and we should have killed it. It’s easy to say now. If instead of drawing, we had won, we would be saying it was a fantastic game, that we did the most difficult thing, which is come back and score two after they went ahead but that’s football.
“In the last seconds they put the ball in the box and they scored, but we have a feeling that we should’ve killed the game before.
“It feels like a defeat. We get a point but it feels like a loss because we were so close to winning and we had chances to kill the game and they were with one less player.”
