Juan Mata insists there's positives to be drawn from Manchester United's defeat to Manchester City.

Writing in his personal blog, Mata reasoned: "To summarise the game before moving on, I would say that City were better than us in the first half, but after Zlatan's goal and our improvement in the second half, the game was pretty much alive.

"When things became more box-to-box they took advantage of it and also had chances to get more goals, but finally the score didn't change and the three points slipped away from us. Yes, three points, because in the end, and despite the game being a peculiar one, it wasn't a final or anything like that, since we are in September."