Manchester United's Rio Ferdinand has blasted his defence and said they must start learning how to 'shut games out'if they are going to win the Barclays Premier League title this season.
Ferdinand was fuming after Lee Bowyer levelled in the 90th minute for Birmingham City in Wednesday night's 1-1 draw at St Andrews and said the result was 'disappointing.'
It was the fourth time this season Sir Alex Ferguson's side had let in goals past the 89th minute after also conceding against Fulham, Everton and Birmingham.
The United defender said: 'In the second half we started quite bright and managed to get our noses in front with a great goal from Berba.'But we need to shut games out like that and we didn't manage to do so.That's the disappointing thing. This season is open for four or fiveteams to go and take it - and we want to be that team.'Against Birmingham we should have got the three points to help ourselves, but we'll now look to our next game instead.'
Ferdinand criticised referee Lee Mason's decision not to rule out Bowyer's goal for handball after it appeared to come off the arm of team-mate Nikola Zigic.
Controversial: Lee Bowyer celebrates his late goal for Birmingham at St Andrews
He claimed Zigic confessed to him that he handled the ball in the build-up after the game.
AndFerdinand said: 'I thought it was a foul and I thought it washandball,' he fumed. 'Their guy said at the end of the game that hehandballed it.'It's easy to get carried away with that result and we were certainly down when we came off the pitch.
'Lategoals are always hard to take, but given how it happened we feel harddone by. There was a push in the back and then obviously the handball.But it's done now, so we have to dust ourselves down and move on.'
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Source: Daily_Mail
