Erik ten Hag believes his Manchester United stars were guilty of losing belief after just three minutes in their 3-0 defeat to Tottenham Hotspur.
This is a worrying admission from the manager and it shows how mentally fragile the current team is at the moment.
During the week, United let a 1-0 goal lead slip against FC Twente in the Europa League. Today we never got going.
Brennan Johnson gave the visitors the perfect start, while United’s task was made even harder when Bruno Fernandes was sent for an early shower. It got even worse for Ten Hag as Kobbie Mainoo was forced off with an injury before the break.
Spurs took advantage of that after the break with further goals from Dejan Kulusevski and Dominic Solanke.
Speaking at full-time, Ten Hag claimed his side’s issues started instantly after Spurs opened the scoring through Johnson.
Ten Hag told BBC, as quoted by The Mirror: “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.
“We had chances and our moments to get back in the game, with Joshua Zirkzee and Alejandro Garnachowhen 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.
“First we have to deal with this and show resilience. This is not good enough. We have to accept this and get better. Focus on the next game and do things better than we did today.”
In reaction to Fernandes’ red card, Ten Hag said: “I don’t think it’s a red card. I also said we had big chances for Zirkzee and even for Rashford, ball on the post from Garnacho. It’s only 1-0 so we could have made a comeback and I think it [the red card] had a big impact on the game.”
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Sad truth is Tottenham didn’t humiliate us – we humiliated ourselves.
Can only repeat what I said after the previous 0-3 home defeat: it’s over, the Ten Hag experiment is over. He’s not going to turn this around, if he knows how to set up a team, why has he not yet done it?
Every team we’ll be playing against will have noted the ease with which Twente got their equaliser and Tottenham their opener. Put your head down, storm into United’s half, and they will part like the flipping Red Sea.
I don’t want to hear any more excuses / apologies / stirring talk about the next match: I want a Manager who can stop embarrassing me(us), make me (us) proud again.
I don’t know why EPL officiating is so unstable. Truth be told, if Ref Kavanagh l issued a red card in error, shouldn’t VAR have called him to the screen? Worse still, was it when Premier League came out shamelessly to defend that decision. You will see their inconsistency when same incident would happen and it will be no red card. Tottenham deserved it, we know but why must the Ref kill the game? It is silly!
As I understand it, VAR supported the decision. FWIW I don’t think it was worth a red, but in fairness the Ref didn’t kill the game, United committed mass suicide.
Someone commented it looked like they were all playing with concussion; difficult to argue with that.