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Louis van Gaal refused to be drawn on whether his Manchester United side are now title contenders following Sunday's 3-0 victory against Liverpool.

The Red Devils are third in the table, five points behind second-placed Manchester City and eight behind leaders Chelsea.

Asked if they can win the title, Van Gaal smiled: "It's not bad, hey?

"I'm very happy but the next match, against Aston Villa, is very important. It's an away match and we have difficulties with away matches."

Wayne Rooney, Juan Mata and Robin van Persie were all on the scoresheet in a convincing victory for United against their biggest rivals.

However, despite a sixth Premier League victory in a row, Van Gaal believes United still need to improve and was disappointed Liverpool created so many opportunities at Old Trafford.

The visitors carved out 19 chances to their hosts' 11 and had nine shots on target - all of which were repelled by goalkeeper and man-of-the-match David De Gea.

"I am very satisfied with the result but still I think we can improve," said Van Gaal. "We gave a lot of unnecessary balls away and because of that Liverpool also had chances to score a goal.

"We had a lot of space in the second half and we could have played the ball very easily but nevertheless we gave the ball away and that is not good. I shall ask the players tomorrow [Monday] why."

The Dutch manager, 63, believes United need to start dominating matches from start to finish before he will be truly happy, and added: "We have to improve our playing style and I'm saying that nearly every week.

"Only after the matches against Queens Park Rangers and Hull City did I say OK, we dominated the game for 90 minutes. We could have dominated the game today but we didn't do that because we gave unnecessary balls away.

"You can kill the game much easier and we have to learn that and improve."