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Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag has had his say on the club’s embarrassing 3-0 loss at the hands of Tottenham Hotspur.
United were dominated for large parts of the game and barring two or three half-chances, the Reds never really looked like they were going to find the back of the net or even compete, despite playing in front of their own fans.
Spurs’ goals were grabbed by Brennan Johnson, Dejan Kulusevski and Dominic Solanke.
The result has left United in 12th position in the Premier League table, with just seven points gained from their first six games of the campaign.
Ten Hag spoke to BBC after the final whistle and gave his verdict on his side’s performance as he explained what exactly went wrong.
The Dutchman insisted that Johnson’s early opener ultimately dashed United’s confidence and from then, the team never recovered. He further stated that the situation got worse after Bruno Fernandes was given his marching orders for a rough challenge on James Maddison.
He lamented that the same exact thing – the manner in which Micky van de Ven was allowed to simply break into United’s territory – was similar to the previous match against FC Twente when a rival player embarked on an almost unchallenged run, that led to the Eredivisie outfit’s equaliser.
Ten Hag said, “To concede a goal after two or three minutes like that, it did something to our belief. Totally unnecessary. To concede a goal like this, the [opposing] centre-half stepping in and passing the whole team over the right side and then the winger tapping in at the far post.”
“Same mistake as in the midweek against Twente, it should be stopped in the first moment.”
“From that moment on we were stressed on the ball. We could not find the triangles or the switches, we had some good moments, but from that moment we could not get a foothold.”
“And we can do better than that. Even after such a mistake from us we should stay calm.”
He added, “We had chances and our moments to get back in the game, with Joshua Zirkzee and Alejandro Garnacho when we still had 11 players and then after the red card too we had moments.”
“We had our chances before half-time and in the second half with 10 men we had chances as well. It definitely had an impact on the game. I don’t think it was a red card.”
Ten Hag emphasised that United must now show resilience as the current state of affairs is “not good enough.”
He explained that all focus shifts to the next game and that the team will try to do much better than they did against Spurs.
Feature image Carl Recine via Getty Images
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