The Spaniard scored a brace as Man Utd  were held to a 2-2 draw with Leicester yesterday.

Jamie Vardy put the Foxes ahead before Mata’s double flipped the game on its head.

Harry Maguire then turned in the equaliser deep into added time to ensure United lost even more ground on league leaders Manchester City.

The gap to top spot extended to 13 points with the draw, which was a bitter blow to their title hopes.

But Mata wants his side to carry on battling right to the very end in hope that City slip up over the hectic festive period.

"You have to keep going and especially in Christmas time," Mata said.

"You play every two or three days and obviously now we feel frustrated and angry.

"But we need to keep going and, from (Christmas Eve), rest and think about the next game - obviously with the will of finishing the game with a much better feeling."

The last-minute strike was even more difficult to take given that Leicester had Daniel Amartey sent off midway through the second half. 

"We didn't kill it - and we should have killed it," Mata added. 

"It's easy to say now.

"If we instead of drawing win at the end, we would have been saying that it was a fantastic game, that we came back and we did the most difficult thing which is to score twice after they went ahead.

"But that's football, you know, and in the last second they put the ball into the box and they scored.

"But we have the feeling that we should have killed the game before.

"It feels like a defeat. We get a point but it feels like a defeat because we were so close to winning and we had a chance to kill the game.

"They were with one less player (after Daniel Amartey was sent off) so it feels like a defeat."