Steven Gerrard aims dig at ‘relatively quiet’ Manchester United fans

Steven Gerrard received a less than welcome return back at Old Trafford on Monday night, but the Aston Villa boss remarked Manchester United’s supporters were “remarkably quiet”.

Gerrard’s Villa side were beaten 1-0 by United in the third round of the FA Cup, while the home fans booed the former Liverpool captain on his first appearance back at Old Trafford since retiring as player.

The Villa manager said: “[ The fans were] Relatively quiet! I have been to noisier stadiums than this. It was a good cup tie, a good atmosphere but in terms of what I got, water off a duck’s back.”

Danny Ings thought he had scored an equaliser but a long-wait at VAR eventually chalked off the goal to send Villa out of the competition. But Gerrard refused to blame the incident as the reason Villa lost.

“When VAR is there and they make a decision you have to accept it,” Gerrard added. “There is nothing you can do to change it. The easy way out is to blame luck and the officials, we won’t do that.

“It’s very tough. We are out of the FA Cup and coming into this job I saw this competition as an opportunity to have a good run in it.

“We dominated for large parts but we were not ruthless enough. I’ve seen enough tonight in terms of the performance to know that I can get to where I want to get to but we need to learn and learn quickly. We need to be more ruthless moving forward, defending crosses we need to be tighter.

“We cannot be having people with free headers in our six yard box. It is quite clear what we need to iron out and we will do it in the short term.”

Villa will host United this Saturday in the Premier League.