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MANCHESTER. — Manchester United fans face a long winter of discontent after Ole Gunnar Solskjaer admitted for the first time that his Old Trafford rebuild has fallen behind schedule.

United’s poor English Premier League football campaign hit another setback on Sunday, when they were beaten 2-0 by bottom of the table Watford.

Heading into Christmas, they sit eighth — 24 points off leaders Liverpool.

Solskjaer wants his side to emulate Jurgen Klopp’s world champions by developing more ways to beat opponents.

But having consistently said United are on a journey to better days, the manager conceded: “At the moment we’re a little bit further behind than what I was hoping for.”

He added: “We knew this season was going to be a season of some ups and downs.

“This season will be used to find a team and a squad for next season, but hopefully we can speed this process up by getting more results.

“I expect us to be more consistent, definitely more experienced and learning from these setbacks . . . of course we want to be a team that can go and dominate teams and break teams down. It’s taken Liverpool a few years to get to that state and we need to just keep on building because that’s what we want to get to.”

Defeat by Watford means three of United’s last six Premier League defeats have come against teams in the relegation zone.

They have now won just one of the past 17 league matches in which they have enjoyed more possession. “Yes, we’re good at counter attacking. Yes, we’ve got pace and fast players. We should always keep that because that’s in our tradition,” Solskjaer said.

“Now we need to be better at breaking lower blocks. Even today, we created loads of chances towards the end, but every time we lose it it’s a counter attack, so you need to lock it down more, be better at stopping the counter-attack. The £89 million midfielder could start in the Boxing Day visit of Newcastle. — Mailonline.