Manchester United are only three matches into the campaign, and Erik ten Hag’s post-defeat press conferences are sounding almost identical to last season’s.
On the back of yet another humiliation at the hands of the club’s biggest rivals, the manager deflected the blame on individual mistakes made by his players – despite Virgil van Dijk admitting after the win that Liverpool knew how United would approach the game, which made them able to nullify their opponents within the first 40 minutes.
Indeed, Casemiro was deplorable for Luis Diaz’s first-half brace, but you’d struggle to pinpoint moments where United convincingly looked the better team.
After Mohamed Salah extended their lead to 3-0 in the 56th minute, it reached an all-too-familiar stage where nobody could’ve predicted how the scoreline would look by the full-time whistle. Liverpool had their tails up, and United were heavily playing under the cosh on their home turf.
Ten Hag’s fiery exchange with critical journo
Yet, when reacting to the match’s affairs with the press, Ten Hag could not accept the premise that he’d made ‘mistakes’ in his game plan.
One reporter posed the question: “What makes you confident that it’s the players that are the problem and not your coaching methods?”
Ten Hag then encouraged the journalist to explain which “mistakes we’ve made regularly,” to which he replied: “Constantly turning the ball over in your own half, playing the ball out from the back, getting mugged, chances come on the back of it, counter-attacks when you’re outnumbered and giving up endless chances in your own stadium against the team [who are your] biggest rivals. With the greatest of respects, we’ve seen that for so long now.”
“You are sure?” the Dutchman retorted. “I don’t think so, otherwise, you wouldn’t win trophies as we did and to beat big opponents. So I’m sorry for you. I have another vision.
“I think we won after [Manchester] City the most trophies in English football, so I’m sorry for you.”
Footage courtesy of Hayters TV.
