SPORT: Football
Nemanja Matic reveals the atmosphere in Manchester United dressing room is not good.

Neman­ja Mat­ic has admit­ted that the dress­ing room atmos­phere at Man­ches­ter Unit­ed is “not fan­tas­tic” amid their cur­rent struggles.

The Red Dev­ils are cur­rent­ly sixth in the Pre­mier League table — four points behind fourth-placed Arse­nal hav­ing played a game more.

A num­ber of play­ers are rumoured to be unhap­py with their cur­rent sit­u­a­tion — with the likes of Paul Pog­ba, Mar­cus Rash­ford, Edin­son Cavani and Jesse Lin­gard among those tout­ed for a sum­mer exit.

Quizzed about the mood in the camp head­ing into the run in, Mat­ic admit­ted that things aren’t going well.

The Ser­bian, 33, told talk­SPORT: “The atmos­phere? It depends on results.

“Of course, when you have good results the atmos­phere is much bet­ter and every­one is happy.

“As you know we are not in the best posi­tion in the league and the atmos­phere is not fan­tas­tic, but we have to stay pos­i­tive and believe until the end because we want to fin­ish in that top-four.

“The atmos­phere in our dress­ing room will depend on that. If we fin­ish top-four then it will be good for us, every­one will be… I can­not say hap­py, but satisfied.

“If we don’t make that, it will be a very sad dress­ing room.”

When asked by host Jim White about the pres­sure of play­ing for Unit­ed, Mat­ic added: “When you play for a big club the pres­sure and expec­ta­tions are high. We have to deal with that, of course.

“In our dress­ing room we have so many good play­ers with a good char­ac­ter and we have to accept that and we have to know the pres­sure is normal.”

On inter­im boss Ralf Rang­nick, he con­tin­ued: “He is an expe­ri­enced coach. We work very hard to be hon­est with him.

“Of course, every­one knows that at the moment we don’t have the best results.

“He is try­ing his best and we are try­ing to fol­low his ideas. Only at the end of the sea­son, when we see the table and see where we are, then we can speak more about this.

“At the moment, what I can say is that Ralf and his staff, and us as play­ers, are doing our best.

“We need to win games. That’s sim­ple. We need to fol­low the coach’s ideas, we need to work on that every day. Game by game to col­lect points.

“The next game is the most impor­tant one for us at the moment, Leices­ter, we know it is going to be hard.

“From now until the end of the sea­son, only points mat­ter for us. It doesn’t mat­ter how we play, the most impor­tant thing is to win games.”

On what it will take to secure a place in the Cham­pi­ons League, Mat­ic is under no illusions.

He con­clud­ed: “We need to fin­ish in the top four, that’s our aim and we will do every­thing for that.

“I think we can make it. We will need to win almost every game until the end of the sea­son. I think that’s pos­si­ble and we will do every­thing for that.”

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