Who do United need to sign to mount a title challenge? Get our daily Manchester United email newsletter Invalid Email Something went wrong, please try again later. Sign me up! Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has lifted the lid on his conversation with Lionel Messi after Manchester United's defeat to Barcelona . The Argentine was not at his best as Barca took a 1-0 lead from the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final at Old Trafford. Messi was left bloodied from a challenge from Chris Smalling during the clash and was particularly subdued after half-time. TV cameras spotted Solskjaer in conversation with Messi after the final whistle but the United boss has played down the chat. Asked what he said to the Barca talisman, the United boss said: "'All the best and see you next week'. That's it." (Image: Getty Images) Messi still set up the Barca winner at Old Trafford as his cross was headed goalwards by Luis Suarez, although the final touch did come off Luke Shaw. United were arguably the better side from there but despite a promising display, did little to threaten Marc-Andre ter Stegen's goal. On Messi, Solskjaer added: "He’s a fantastic player. We did as well as we could against him. We kept our shape well. "It could have gone both ways. We didn’t hit the target and that’s one of the disappointing things. "We’ll go there with work to be done but we will create chances." (Image: Sportimage/PA Images) United lost the first leg of their last-16 tie with PSG at Old Trafford but managed to fight back to go through to the quarter-finals. Solskjaer said: "We know we're not gonna create loads of chances, so we have to take the ones we get we and today you have to soak up the pressure. "I expect them to want to kill the tie and put sword into us [in the second leg] but we have to soak that pressure, break. But, at times, keep the ball better than we did today."<doc-sep>So Manchester United need a 2-1 win at the Camp Nou. Can anybody think of a time when they have done that? Yes, you at the back there – baby-faced man in the grey V-neck? Really, this cannot go on. Sooner or later Ole Gunnar Solskjær is going to have to do something as manager that does not immediately draw comparison with Sir Alex Ferguson. Perhaps he will inspire a victory away to Barcelona – something United have never achieved. Perhaps there will even be two late goals, one prodded home at the back post in injury time after a corner has been flicked on. But if he does, it will feel less like football management than witchcraft. Give it Melisandre till the end of the season. The first leg of the quarter-final seemed a match in which a number of doubts coalesced. There is no disgrace in losing 1-0 to Barcelona and, while United will have to do something they have never done if they are to progress, at this stage of the previous round they had to do something no side had ever done before. There was much in Wednesday’s performance, at least after an oddly diffident opening 20 minutes, from which Solksjær could draw encouragement. United pressed ferociously and for long spells made Barça look sloppy in possession. Scott McTominay is beginning to blossom as a midfielder in his own right, rather than just being a bloke who is emphatically not Paul Pogba, as he often seemed to be under José Mourinho. If Diogo Dalot and Marcus Rashford had been a little more clinical, United might even have won. But the truth is Barcelona were relatively comfortable after half-time. They survived their wobble, realised United are dangerous only on the counterattack (as Louis van Gaal noted when, with a robustness that obfuscated his point, he accused Solskjær of being a manager “who parks the bus”, sat deep and denied United’s rapid wide men space to run into. Solskjær had no solution. Paul Pogba (centre) is in danger of falling into the Gerrard Trap of being neither one thing nor the other. Photograph: Tom Purslow/Man Utd via Getty Images That is only in part a criticism of him. United do not have a picklock with the tight technical skills to undo a massed defence – something that draws questions, again, about Pogba, a player who seems in danger of falling into the Steven Gerrard trap of being neither one thing nor the other. In a world in which midfielders tend to fall into two bands, he has elements of both but not enough of either. He might have thrived as a box-to-box player in the 80s but these days, at the very highest level, he seems too ebullient to function as a holder, but not quite deft enough to be a No 10. In isolation, perhaps, the defeat would not matter too much for Solskjær. It’s Barcelona, it’s the quarter-finals of the Champions League. It happens. But it was his fourth defeat in five games in the middle of which, Ed Woodward’s touch as sure as ever, he was given a three-year contract. In 1973 the Yale professor Harold Bloom proposed his theory of the Anxiety of Influence, positing an Oedipal relationship between writers and their literary forebears. John Milton, for instance, he argued could truly excel as a poet only after he had symbolically murdered his great idol Edmund Spenser. William Blake, likewise, had to cast off Milton. A similar dynamic can be seen in football, perhaps most strikingly in the case of Mauricio Pochettino. 01:09 Solskjær: PSG result gives Manchester United hope after home loss to Barça – video That the Spurs manager is of the school of Marcelo Bielsa is obvious but so too his discomfort in talking about the influence of Bielsa. Pochettino has moved beyond the manager who came into his bedroom one night when he was 14 and made him a footballer on the basis of his legs. He is grateful to Bielsa for the start he gave him and the principles he instilled but he also sees his flaws and does things differently. A sense of loyalty seems to inhibit him from discussing that divergence too openly. Solskjær, at some point, will have to go through a similar process, made all the harder by the fact the symbolic father he has to knife tends to sit a few rows behind him at games, while the stand he faces from the bench is named after him. Invoking “the Boss” at every turn was an effective tool to signal his difference from the previous regime and to highlight a return to the United Way but just as McTominay had to be more than just not-Pogba, so Solskjær has to be more than just not-Mourinho. And as, say, Dynamo Kyiv have found, a club cannot go through life living forever in the shadow of a previous manager. The Fiver: sign up and get our daily football email. In that, Solskjær’s opposite number at Barça, Ernesto Valverde, perhaps offers a valuable lesson. He played at Barcelona under Johan Cruyff and was appointed in part because he is of the school. And yet he was prepared to risk the wrath of the devout and take the most un-Cruyffian step of protecting a lead by packing men behind the ball. Solskjær, similarly, must find his own way and become more than merely a conduit through which the Fergusonian vibe can flow – although perhaps not until after he has followed his mentor in pulling off a stunning 2-1 win at the Camp Nou.<doc-sep>
MANCHESTER, England -- Ole Gunnar Solskjaer said he has seen enough during Manchester United's defeat to Barcelona to believe his team can force another dramatic Champions League turnaround. And the Norwegian believes that if United can knock out Barcelona at the Nou Camp next week after the 1-0 first leg defeat at Old Trafford it will eclipse the 3-1 victory over Paris Saint-Germain at the Parc des Princes in the last round. "To do it would be an even greater achievement than that," Solskjaer told a news conference on Wednesday night. "The PSG performance gives us the hope and belief that we can do it. "We are playing against probably the favourites in this tournament and going to the Nou Camp is going to a challenge. With the history Barca have, and they are not used to losing at home but we can do it. "We can carry a goal threat, but we have to provide more ammunition and chances." United failed to register shot on target against Barcelona -- who won thanks to Luke Shaw's early own goal after he deflected in Luis Suarez's header -- but Solskjaer was still buoyed by the performance that owed much to the tenacity of Scott McTominay in midfield. The 22-year-old was picked after injuries ruled out both Nemanja Matic and Ander Herrera and he excelled against Sergio Busquets and Ivan Rakitic. "The boy is developing every time he plays," said Solskjaer. "He comes into training every day with a fantastic attitude and that's the way to improve. "Every game he grows and he grows and today he was the first one who took the ball down and settled us. We had to slow the game down. "We were too quick to give the ball away. After 15 or 20 minutes we settled and Scott and Fred and Paul [Pogba], the three midfielders did really well." Shaw will miss the second leg after picking up a booking for a foul on Lionel Messi, but Solskjaer was left perplexed as to how Busquets had stayed on the pitch for 90 minutes after committing a series of fouls after picking up a yellow card of his own in the first half. "Why does Luke Shaw get a yellow card when he does his?" said Solskjaer. "It's just that consistency and definitely yes [Busquets should have been sent off]. "There's nothing we can do about it. I can't complain about the referee. We haven't had any homers, if you put it that way. We are where we are and he's going to play against over there. We have to go there with the same belief and same energy as he did in Paris."