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Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag has bizarrely claimed that the team’s loss at the hands of Crystal Palace was out of the blue and out of character, despite the club’s extremely poor form this season.
United suffered their 13th defeat of the Premier League campaign in a 4-0 battering vs. Palace at Selhurst Park.
A brace from Michael Olise and goals from Jean-Phillipe Mateta and Tyrick Mitchell piled further misery on Ten Hag, who is already under intense pressure.
United were poor again and were outdone in almost every department by Oliver Glasner’s men.
After the game, Ten Hag spoke to reporters and gave his verdict on his players’ performance and what went wrong for the team in London.
Ten Hag said in his press conference, “It’s very disappointing. Definitely, the worst defeat [of the season]. We should have done better. The team performance was not correct, making big mistakes and not following the plan or the script or the rules we have. Of course, also individual mistakes but then we should cover each other and we didn’t. We let each other down and then you get the worst defeat.”
When asked whether the defeat was out of the blue for United, he responded, “Actually yes, because this is the fourth defeat in 2024. So far you have always seen a team that was following the script and that’s why we didn’t get a lot of wins but we were hard to beat and today we were easy to beat.”
He insisted that all the players in his ranks are committed to him and want him to succeed. “I’m sure that they have the right intentions and they were eager from the start but once we were playing, we didn’t perform. Individuals didn’t perform and as a team, we didn’t perform.”
Ten Hag admitted that Jonny Evans was not fully fit and was rushed back into the action because of the club’s injury crisis in the defensive department.
The Dutchman remarked, “Definitely not [Evans wasn’t ready]. Huge respect to Jonny that he stepped in but he wasn’t ready to go into this game. He only had two days of training and so that is one example. He played for 90 minutes and that’s really a reward that he did this but of course, he can’t play to the levels that he normally does.”
Ten Hag doubled down on his statement that United have only tasted defeat on four occasions since the start of 2024 and also called on all involved with the club to have faith.
He was put to the task on where the belief should come from. He answered, “As I said, we’ve only had four defeats so far and all season we’ve had big problems in the backline especially. All the time there was a team with fighting spirit and hard to beat. As I said, today we were easy to beat.”
The 54-year-old coach urged his players to emulate the drive and “fighting spirit” demonstrated by the United away fans, who were brilliant in their support of the team even in very difficult circumstances.
Up next for United is Arsenal at Old Trafford this weekend.
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