Ole Gunnar Solskjær is adamant that Manchester United have not lost confidence despite an unconvincing start to the Premier League season.

The manager has called on his young strike force to harness their poaching instincts and score the “nasty little tap-ins” he did as a player. Solskjær, a prolific goalscorer in his heyday, said he believes Marcus Rashford, Anthony Martial and Mason Greenwood will sharpen their senses in the box after a profligate performance in the 1-1 draw at Southampton on Saturday.

Romelu Lukaku and Alexis Sánchez left the club last week and Solskjær, who has acknowledged his squad is light on attacking options, said his strikers need to add another dimension to their game. Martial did not travel to the south coast owing to a thigh injury sustained in defeat against Crystal Palace but the 17-year-old Greenwood made a lively cameo off the substitutes’ bench while Rashford, spurned a golden opportunity to double United’s first-half lead after Daniel James opened the scoring.

“We do create chances, we do create pressure,” Solskjær said. “It’s about those scrappy goals now. We have young players and they’ve got to learn to score those nasty little tap-ins that I did. They count just as much.”

Solskjær is confident Rashford and Martial can cope with the pressure on them to deliver the goals for United in the absence of a senior attacking presence this season. “They’ve had so many years in this football club, in this team that I expect them to be leading stars. He [Rashford] will get it. He’s getting there. We keep on practising those finishes and crosses.

“If we can build the pressure as we did, I’m sure we’ll do OK. He wants to have the full array of armoury. He wants to play on the left, through the middle, as a No 10, as a right-winger. He knows, both for England and for us, he’s got great teammates. Harry Kane is the No 9 for England and Anthony for us, so he knows he’ll sometimes have to play off the left.”

Asked whether he needs to reassure his players after extending their winless away run to eight games, Solskjær said: “They can feel what we’re doing. They feel the last two games [that] we’re a team that dominates games. At Wolverhampton we dominated. The first one was classic counter-attacking football against a very good Chelsea side. But the last three, we need to learn to win games like this, and the boys want to learn how.”

Harry Maguire concurred with Solskjær’s sentiments regarding ruthlessness and the centre-back said he and his teammates also need to develop a healthy arrogance. “I feel like we’ve been fairly solid defensively but the fine margins are the set‑plays and they’re punishing us at the moment and we’re not being clinical at the other end,” he said.

“We were too sloppy and we need to improve on that and show arrogance on the ball and be confident on the ball.

“We’re Man Utd and we want to control games and I feel like the last 20 [minutes] of the first [half] and the first 20 of the second we didn’t really control the game and I think we got punished for that. ”