Title hopes fading for United - Ferguson

Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson believes Saturday's 0-0 draw at 10-man Crystal Palace has left his team with a mountain to climb if they are to overhaul Premier League leaders Chelsea.

Ferguson spoke a couple of hours before Chelsea beat relegation battlers Norwich City 3-1 to leave Jose Mourinho's men eight points clear at the top with a game in hand.

"It's a bad result for us," Ferguson told Sky Sports News after his big guns failed to fire at Selhurst Park.

"When you're chasing for the championship you have to win these games and we haven't done that.

"So we've given ourselves a real mountain to climb... we've given a real advantage to Chelsea."

Despite having a crunch Champions League game at Milan tomorrow, Ferguson threw on three attacking players - Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo and Paul Scholes - during the second half in a desperate bid to break the deadlock.

None of them could find a way past impressive Hungarian keeper Gabor Kiraly, whose side are just two points above the relegation zone in 17th place.

"At the end of the day, their goalkeeper made two or three fantastic saves and they've just dug in and got a point for survival," said Ferguson, who had warned his side of the dangers ahead.

"I said to them before the game that teams down the bottom of the league are going to fight for their lives and I think we saw that today.

"We were always going to be the team who made the running and they quite rightly got stuck in and made it difficult for us. Plenty of teams do that.

"Normally, we can find a way to get through that...we had great chances and we're a bit disappointed."

Ferguson played down the fact that Palace had Greek midfielder Vassilis Lakis red-carded after 64 minutes.

"I don't think the sending off was that important because they were back in their box anyway," Ferguson said. "Young (Andrew) Johnson was up front on his own chasing shadows."