Manchester United boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer thinks his young team will have learned some valuable lessons after they battled back to earn a 3-3 draw with Sheffield United.

The Reds were abysmal in the first half at Bramall Lane and were fortunate to only be behind to John Fleck’s strike.

Solskjaer admitted he was angry at half time and his mood would not have improved when Lys Mousset doubled the hosts’ lead early in the second half.

However, the Norwegian took some comfort from a sparkling seven-minute spell his side produced to turn the game on its head as goals from Brandon Williams, Mason Greenwood and Marcus Rashford had the Reds in front with 79 minutes on the clock.

Solskjaer was denied a sixth victory in the last seven matches by Oliver McBurnie’s last-minute equalizer, but he believes he and his players can take some positives from what had been a dire situation.

‘It was a very poor performance. I’m thinking back to Everton last season – that team gave up and this team didn’t. So when we turned it around it’s a great response to get from the boys,’ said the United boss.

‘We did play badly in the first half. We didn’t win any challenges, we weren’t first to the ball, we didn’t stick to what we had planned. I could have changed all the players at half time, except David [De Gea] as he kept us in it.

‘You don’t expect them to give up, but last year we did. Today we didn’t. Even though the big part of this game is a negative and we are disappointed with it, the overriding feeling is a positive because of the character to stick in there and turn it around.

‘I was angry, disappointed at half time. I had to wake them up. We had to go for it in the second half. We lacked desire in the first half and they had it. You’ve got to earn the right to win the game and we didn’t have any right to win the game after 70 minutes.

‘But the boys will have learned a lesson from the 71st minute to the 90th, or whenever they scored. You must remember that these players are young. The first goal gave them belief.

‘It’s not desire in terms of the word desire, maybe it’s confidence in themselves. I don’t doubt them wanting to win, sometimes young players don’t really know how to win challenges like this and we must have learned a lot today, I’m sure we have.

‘They’ve come through the academy most of these boys and in the academy you don’t play in these kind of games, despite trying to teach them to play without fear, and they will have learned a lot in this 90-odd minutes – so there will be some pluses as well.’