United looked set to move into third place spot in the Premier League as they face Southampton yesterday night.
But a defensive error which led to Michael Obafemi’s equalizer put them back in the fifth place.
Despite the error, United will secure a top 4 finish if they win their remaining fixtures with which include a visit to their top-four rival Leicester City on the final day.
But Maguire admitted his team must fix their defense to play next season’s Champions League.
“We’ve been really good on set-plays lately,” said Maguire. “Defending set-plays is something we’ve improved on during this unbeaten run.
“At the start of the season, we had a terrible record conceding set-play after set-play. But we’ve been really good at them lately.
“The guy can’t get a header in at our front post when we’ve got four men around it. We’ll have a look at it and we’ll learn from it.
“We’re disappointed. We got control of the game and we had numerous chances to kill the game off. We weren’t at our best.
“We’re not saying there are loads of areas to improve on, but we did enough to win the game and a set-play has killed us in the end.”
“We weren’t good enough on the ball and gave the ball away far too much as a team, everyone in the team.
“We brought a little bit of pressure onto ourselves, we created chances, and we should kill the game off with a third goal.
“And we have to dust ourselves down. We have some big games coming up, where we have to go for the three points.”
Nemanja Matic cut in and said: “We have to keep our head up, we have three games to go.
“The next one is Crystal Palace. If we win the last three games, we’re in the Champions League.
“So we have to stay positive and keep working as we were until now.
“It’s in our hands, we have to recover as soon as possible.
“Of course, three months ago it wasn’t in our hands. We needed Chelsea and Leicester to drop points, which they did. Now we are a point behind Chelsea and it’s in our hands.
“We’ll take it game by game. We’ll think about Palace first, then if we do our job there, like we normally do.
“We have to go with everything, because we want to play Champions League next season.”
source: Mirror sports
