Louis van Gaal: 'The result was fantastic'

Louis van Gaal spoke to Sky Sports in the aftermath of United's excellent 4-2 victory at home to Manchester City, and we've transcribed a few of his quotes.

He was asked what the result meant:

"Three points. Four points ahead of the fourth place. And I'm very happy for the fans because I have seen what it meant to them. The fans have always supported us, even when the results were not good, so I'm very happy for them. The result was fantastic."

He also revealed that some of the players weren't aware they finished the game a man short:

"I had to bring Carrick off the pitch when he was a little bit injured; it was a little stupid from me ... some of our players didn't know we had 10 men."

His evaluation of the match as a whole was just about perfect:

"We started very badly. We were not the United we have seen in the last matches. We were very nervous; we didn't get pressure on the ball in the beginning. But then we scored the goal -- a fantastic assist of David de Gea -- from that moment there was more confidence in my team, and then we started to develop our pace and and our gameplan. The second half was much better than the first half."

On Ashley Young:

"I think Ashley Young was man of the match. I found that he was very good; he was involved in the first three goals and he did his job as his left winger. When he was left midfielder, he let in one goal, but okay!"

And on what this means for the season as a whole:

"We have made already big steps in the last six games because after the defeat against Arsenal it was very difficult to maintain confidence in the philosophy. But all the credit to the players, because they had to do it under pressure from the fans who were expecting today that we would win. But it was not so easy, as you saw in the stress of the players in the first 10-15 minutes."