Erik ten Hag wants Manchester United to be more clinical up front despite comfortable victory over Nottingham Forest

Erik ten Hag expressed faith in the strikers he has at his disposal after watching Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial score in a comfortable victory over Nottingham Forest.

Rashford continued his strong form by opening the scoring in the 19th minute, then teed up Martial for the second moments later, with Fred then sealing a 3-0 win with a late goal in the second half.

Ten Hag is keen to strengthen in attack in the January transfer window following Cristiano Ronaldo's exit, but the Dutchman said he has full confidence in the players he already has as United try to break into the top four.

"I never spoke about that I have doubt about that on the counter side," Ten Hag said. "We have (Alejandro) Garnacho, we have (Anthony) Elanga, we have numbers as well, but those four didn’t play two games together. I think only Everton.

"When we can play those front four often together there will be more routines and when we get more routines in we have more of a goalscoring threat and that is what you see tonight, we score three goals. I am quite happy with them.

"When you are critical – and I am – there is room for improvement because we should score more than three goals with the chances we create but I’m happy with creating all those chances."

United were strongly linked with Cody Gakpo in the summer and had been tipped to pursue the PSV Eindhoven forward again, but the Eredivisie club have now announced that a deal has been struck with Liverpool.

"I’m not looking at other teams, I am looking at our team," he said. "I am convinced of the squad we have, the players in our team, they have the capabilities, individual and as a team to compete with all of those teams."

United played with a patched-up defence with illness ruling out Victor