Ralf Rangnick has confirmed he will continue as a consultant to Manchester United despite his expected appointment as coach of the Austria national team. It emerged prior to the 1-1 draw with Chelsea on Thursday night Rangnick was considering an offer from the Austrian football association to take over ahead of their Nations League fixtures against Croatia, Denmark and France in June. The 63-year-old refused to address the reports about the Austria role but confirmed he would fulfil his consultancy contract with United.
Ralf Rangnick said: “Tonight is our game against Chelsea and I don’t want to speak about anything else. Please accept that and except that, so please ask questions about tonight’s game. I said let us speak about the game. What I can tell you and confirm is I will definitely continue with my consultancy role at the end of the season and for the next two years and I’m very much looking forward to that. We haven’t spoken, Erik and myself, but we have spoken with the board about the content, the profile of the job, the content of that consultancy role, we spoke about that and that’s why I can now confirm I will definitely continue with that.”
United can now only finish the Premier League campaign with a maximum of 64 points – the same amount they tallied during the David Moyes season of 2013-14. Marcos Alonso put Chelsea 1-0 up on the hour but Cristiano Ronaldo equalised with his 23rd club goal this term.
Ralf Rangnick said: “We were fortunate in the first-half. We needed some great saves by David [de Gea] again and some last-ditch tackles. I thought in the second half we were better. We had more moments when we could get hold of the ball, although we conceded a goal after 60 minutes, we showed a great reaction, with an amazing assist by Nemanja [Matic] and a great finish from Cristiano. In the last 20 minutes, it was an open game, they could have scored and we were fortunate when Reece James hit the post. But we also had our moments. Cristiano could have scored another one or two goals. But, overall, we have to admit we were fortunate to get that point. But the reaction we showed in the second-half was good. There is no reason to blame anyone with regard to attitude but you could see we were far away from controlling the game when Chelsea were in possession of the ball.”
