After being substituted in the second half while United were down to 10 men, Ronaldo briefly appeared on Solskjaer’s technical area alongside Bruno Fernandes and shouted in the direction of his teammates, much to the annoyance of Ferdinand, who was working as a pundit on BT Sport.
Ferdinand posited that he would have asked Ronaldo to take a seat if he was Solskjaer, who he felt was being undermined by the Portugal superstar.
Responding to Ferdinand’s comments, Solskjaer said: ‘Rio, again you know, sometimes he comments on things he doesn’t really know.
‘It should have been a yellow card for the boy when he brought down Nemanja (Matic). Both Bruno (Fernandes) and Cristiano, as competitive as they are, suddenly I had them on my shoulder.
‘They were there for a brief spell and shouted to the referee. That was the aggravation of getting a few bad decisions against us.
‘But then Cristiano sat down and Bruno sat down. We know that there is only one man allowed in that technical area and that’s either me or Michael Carrick or Mike Phelan or Kieran McKenna who is up there.
‘That was just a spur-of-the-moment thing, over a player who should have been sent off.
‘So I don’t have any problem with them showing some passion and then going back down. It’s not like he (Ronaldo) was coaching his players. No.’
