O’Neil: Huge Positives Despite Manchester United Defeat
Thursday, 3rd Sep 2026 15:30<\/p>\n
Blues manager Gary O\u2019Neil believes there were huge positives to be taken from his side\u2019s performance at Old Trafford last weekend, despite ultimately losing 5-2 to Manchester United. <\/p>\n
Town took the lead through Leif Davis and were on top before a Marcelino Nunez slip led to the home team\u2019s equaliser, then a bizarre VAR decision, which has been widely criticised in the days since, led to the Red Devils\u2019 second.<\/p>\n
United romped to a 5-1 lead before Chuba Akpom pulled one back in injury time, the former Arsenal striker\u2019s first goal in the Premier League, almost 13 years after his debut in the division.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was our first real test of a bit of adversity,\u201d O\u2019Neil reflected. \u201cI guess Sunderland equalising would have been a test of that as well, but a more extreme version of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe a feeling of, I don\u2019t know, like we\u2019d been pegged back and it wasn\u2019t really justified. So maybe that just affected the emotion in the group and we left game plan for a little bit.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot long, when I watched it back we didn\u2019t actually leave game plan for as long as I thought we did, but that sort of 12-minute spell was enough to take the game away from us.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I think for the group it was a good one for understanding we can compete at the level, but we need to make sure that we\u2019re right on-task to give ourselves the best chance to do so.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, a good one, because you take loads of positives from it. I know you lose 5-2 and that will be the headline and the main talking point, but beyond that when I\u2019m doing the meetings with the players, the transition at the football club, the amount of players we\u2019ve signed, a new coach, the amount of work that\u2019s gone in, for the team to have recorded a win against Sunderland and to look as well organised and together as it did for the first 55 minutes at Old Trafford, there are huge positives in that, because obviously it can normally take a while to gel.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the lads show a good understanding and the level is a ruthless level. You don\u2019t have to be far off \u2014 a little bit of misfortune, a little bit out of shape \u2014 and Manchester United have the players that can expose you.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we accept that, we move on and now we have a really big task this weekend that we\u2019re looking forward to, of trying to take some points off Liverpool.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Neil dismissed the suggestion that there might be a drop in belief following the defeat.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere won\u2019t be a loss of confidence regardless of what the results are at the weekend,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really separate the games. Of course, where you finish in the league is going to be over 38 games. We just separate them really clearly, that every one is its own different challenge.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Premier League asks you so many questions. The questions asked against Liverpool will be really, really different to the questions asked against Manchester United.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we have a real good understanding that we fully commit to this game that we\u2019re facing now, we debrief it and then it\u2019s gone. It\u2019s literally gone. Whether we did well, Sunderland, won, gone, take your learnings, make sure we\u2019re ready to get on to the next one.<\/p>\n
\u201cSunderland, Manchester United, they\u2019re behind us for now. We\u2019re ready for Liverpool and then, post-Liverpool, we\u2019ll be ready for Crystal Palace.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just how we\u2019re going to go about it this year. We\u2019re going to be really, really focused on each individual game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the fans will be really good at helping us with that. I think every time we turn up to Portman Road, of course they\u2019re going to want us to be high up the league and they\u2019re going to want us to be on a good run.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut regardless of what sort of form we\u2019re in or what the previous result has been, I think every time we turn up there, there\u2019s going to be this wall of noise right behind us to help push us through and that\u2019s going to be really, really important to us.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we\u2019re going to be ready every game. The guys at Portman Road are going to be ready, I\u2019m sure. And everyone should be really excited about tomorrow.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a lot of work that has gone into getting the club back to this point, Liverpool at home, some of the best players in world football coming to Portman Road, and we have a real chance of doing something against them as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, O\u2019Neil is set to meet with Jason Schechterle, a member and representative of the Arizona Public Safety Personnel Retirement System (PSPRS), the police and fire service pension fund which still owns a significant stake in the club and an embodiment of the Blues\u2019 Running Towards Adversity mission statement.<\/p>\n
In March 2001, aged 28, only 14 months into his career as a police officer on the streets of Phoenix, Schechterle was on his way to an emergency call when a taxi, travelling at over 100mph, crashed into the rear of his patrol car, the driver having suffered an epileptic fit.<\/p>\n
Schechterle\u2019s police car burst into flames and he was trapped inside for more than 90 seconds.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s in today,\u201d O’Neil said. \u201cI\u2019m looking forward to meeting him. Can’t wait. Heard a lot about him. Really excited to sit and talk to him about what he does. And I’ve heard he’s an incredible guy.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs you can see from the smile when you asked me, I\u2019m really looking forward to it, so hopefully that will be today. If not, he\u2019s around next week as well, I think. So planning to spend some time together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Photo: TWTD<\/p>\n
Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"O’Neil: Huge Positives Despite Manchester United DefeatThursday, 3rd Sep 2026 15:30 Blues manager Gary O\u2019Neil believes there were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1185375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8813],"tags":[14889,14893,12733,748,14894,393,94,14890,8641,14891,4884,14887,1926,14888,25956,2465,14892,12,125,14895,14897,14896,16,15],"class_list":["post-1185374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manchester","tag-alf-ramsey","tag-blogs","tag-bobby-robson","tag-britain","tag-chatroom","tag-england","tag-football","tag-football-club","tag-football-news","tag-forum","tag-great-britain","tag-ipswich","tag-ipswich-town","tag-itfc","tag-kieran-mckenna","tag-manchester","tag-message-board","tag-news","tag-polls","tag-portman-road","tag-tractor-boys","tag-tractorboys","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1185374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1185375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1185374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1185374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1185374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}