Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer reacts to Mauricio Pochettino trophy comments

Tottenham Hotspur manager Pochettino claimed on Sunday that winning silverware only builds 'egos'

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has insisted that Manchester United will always look to win trophies and merely finishing in the top four is not a “dream”.

Solskjaer’s comments come in the wake of Tottenham Hotspur manager Mauricio Pochettino claiming that silverware only builds “egos”.

Pochettino is yet to win a trophy in English football and has come under criticism after his Tottenham side were dumped out of the FA Cup and League Cup in the space of four days.

The Argentine remains the favourite to succeed Jose Mourinho as United’s permanent manager, even after Solskjaer’s faultless start as caretaker.

Solskjaer did not wish to comment directly on Pochettino’s remarks but stressed his belief that, at United, silverware will always be the highest priority.

“I am not here to discuss what Pochettino says and what other managers say. First of all, it’s the next game, but we are about winning trophies. Of course we are,” he said.

“We can’t win the league this year. We are still in the cup, we are going to try to win the FA Cup.

“Of course, I think every manager wants to win every game so I don’t think that is the point [Pochettino] was making.”

As a United player, Solskjaer won six Premier League titles, two FA Cups and famously scored the winning goal in the 1999 Champions League final.

Even if he does not succeed Mourinho permanently and returns to ‘parent club’ Molde at the end of the season, the Norwegian hopes to have added to the Old Trafford trophy cabinet.

“If you win trophies that’s a fantastic day for everyone in the club,” he said. “It’s just the best time of your life, that day when you win, because you never know when the next one is going to come.

“The manager [Sir Alex Ferguson] always said: 'Enjoy this'. Whatever trophy you win, you have just got to enjoy it.

“But then again, it’s not up to me to discuss whatever anyone else says. I am just saying that we here at this club, we are looking to win trophies.”

When Solskjaer arrived last month, United were 11 points adrift of the Premier League top four. That gap has since closed to a mere three points, after six league wins from six.

Yet the United caretaker sees qualifying for next season’s Champions League as a minimum expectation for a club of that size.

And, before Burnley’s visit to Old Trafford on Tuesday night, Solskjaer suggested that a cup triumph would mean more to him than climbing a few places up the table.

“That’s not the dream though, to be top four,” he said. We’re Man United, you should always aim to win the league.

“We can’t do that this year but we’ve just got to look forward to that again because we have to get back to that.

“We’ve got the Champions League, we’ve got the FA Cup, we can’t just say top four and that’s it.

“We’ve got to look at ‘Can we win something this year?’ and as I’ve said, I go into every single game as a Man United manager thinking we can win this game.”