David Sullivan has claimed that the win against Birmingham was inspired by his criticism of Gianfranco Zola and his squad.
Sullivan, who had revealed earlier in the week how he would be asking all staff to take a 25 per cent pay cut this summer had been heavily criticised by Zola and supporters for his negative comments ahead of such a crucial game.But having seen United earn their first win since Boxing Day, the club's joint owner insisted that his words must have had a positive effect.
"It was the last resort. I had to say something to galvanise people into action because our results and displays just hadn't been good enough," he said. "There's still a lot of hard work to do but I'm really pleased with the way the team has responded.
"If it was so the players could stick two fingers up at me on behalf of the manager then great. At least it means we'll keep winning. It's dangerous but then the situation at West Ham is dangerous too.
"I've been accused of bad timing but I believe it was the best possible timing because look at the response it got. Whether that's totally down to what I said we'll never know - and the manager and players deserve lots of credit for the way they played.
"But laying things on the line is a tactic I've used before. I did it in the last game of last season at Birmingham when they needed to beat Reading to get automatic promotion. It worked then and it seems to have worked again."
Zola dismissed rumours of a fall-out between himself and Sullivan following Wednesday night's 2-0 win, stating: "We made our points and now we have to keep working together to get this team [into] a better position. That is the end of the story."
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