Gayle told the Chronicle: "It would have been a tough fortnight if we hadn’t have won. It’s lifted the place. Going into the next two weeks we’d have been in the relegation zone and we’d be a bit upset. Now we have those three points we come out of it. At the same time we know we have a massive 11 games left and we know we need to pick up more points because it is so tight down there.
"It’s been a tough few months for everybody really. The fans were happy with me when I came off and I was pleased with the ovation. The fans actually set us off. In the first few minutes, we made a few blocks and pressed them into making mistakes. The fans got right behind us and pushed us really hard. They were with through the whole game and we needed them. Over the last two weeks, we probably haven’t got the rub of the green.
"I feel we got that against Man United and you do need that against the big teams. Obviously, to do it at home in front of the fans was nice so we gave something back to them. That’s what the fans here want - 100%. They want you to work hard and give everything. In certain situations, we are going to need that so for us to do that against a team like Man United is fantastic.
"They have some great names and great players but you can’t show them too much respect they probably deserve. That’s what we did, we came out and took the game to them. We didn’t drop too deep until the last 15 minutes and we didn’t let them put too much pressure on us. When it started to get towards the end you start to get nervous and try to play it out but we dealt with it. We’ll know we need that to get through. Psychologically to get that win - and just before the break - is fantastic. We know that if we turn up and give our best and things go our way we can do it against the best. We have 11 cup finals now and we will need to the same in each game.”