Van Nistelrooy said: “It was an excellent performance where two cycles have been broken, thank God, on the goals and on the result. It was a spirited performance and it was a performance I like to see.

“We haven’t seen enough of it over the past weeks. I think the Chelsea performance was the last one. The others, we weren’t able to compete.

“We talked a lot on how to move forward with the six or seven games, how to use them, how we want to break the cycles. Today was a great reaction from the players.

“It’s very clear (there was more fight). We talked a lot about how to break a negative cycle, because when you’re in there, you think it’s never going to end.

“It starts with changing your behaviour. You have to act now, you can’t wait in difficult moments, in adversity. You can’t wait for something to change, you have to start acting. We spoke about it a lot.

“We also spoke about how to use the next six weeks for the absolute benefit of every individual in the squad to prepare in the best way possible for the next season, without stopping the fight until it’s mathematically over.

“That’s including new players in the squad, shaping the future in that way. It’s a change of course since the Newcastle game and is definitely the way forward if I look at this performance today.”