Ralf reacts to defeat at Brighton

Saturday 07 May 2022 20:53

Manchester United interim boss Ralf Rangnick has reflected on our 4-0 defeat against Brighton in the Premier League and admitted the fans deserve an apology.

The Reds fell behind early on as Moses Caicedo struck from the edge of the area, as goals from Marc Cucurella, Pascal Gross and Leandro Trossard soon followed in the second half. 

We remain in sixth position in the table, with our final domestic outing coming in just over two weeks time, as we travel to Selhurst Park to face Crystal Palace. 

The German offering his thoughts on the defeat and here's a selection of what the 63-year-old had to say...

Report: Brighton 4 United 0

 Article

A game to forget as the Reds are well beaten on the South coast.

APOLOGIES TO THE FANS

"Yes it was [a poor performance]. From the first to the last minute this was not enough and in all-important areas we were second best. To start with we can only apologise to our supporters, it was a terrible performance and a humiliating defeat. It was a completely different game and today from the first minute we allowed them too much time, too much space and we were never able to be in a position to stop them playing through our lines. The game plan was completely different, we told the players to be as compact as we could possibly be but we couldn’t stop them."

SEAGULLS CAUSED BIG PROBLEMS

"We had big problems with their width through their wing-backs, we couldn't stop their wing-backs as they were always pretty high and wide. For us it was whenever they played the diagonal ball we struggled with those balls although we told our full-backs that they should get out earlier. It was very, very difficult to stop them in the first half at all and in the second half we took the risk to bring Edi [Cavani] on as a second striker and Fred and went to a 4-4-2. In hindsight it was maybe a little bit of a risk to play a 4-4-2 against them, but we had to try and change the energy. Today we were second best in all relevant areas."

 

CHANGES REQUIRED

"Had we continued to play how we did in the first half it was always going to be a question of when we were going to concede that second goal. That's why I decided to go with more of a risk and play the 4-4-2 with Edi and Fred as a second six, but the two early goals at 3 and 4-0 after 60/65 minutes was a disaster for us. We didn’t defend at all, we didn’t stop them and if you allow a team like Brighton or any other team who are good on the ball like we saw the first time we played them, we were struggling. But if you allow them that much space and time and after being 3 and 4-0 up it was easy for them to play that game."

ENERGY LEVELS

"We have to split it up into two different halves or areas. Until the West Ham game, or even until the Tottenham game we had very in-between and solid performances. When we beat Tottenham and West Ham at home and won at Leeds it was a completely different level of energy. Games like today or at Everton there was a clear lack of energy and aggressiveness. If you play like that, you cannot expect to win a game."

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 Article

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SUMMER RECRUITMENT PLANS

"Please accept that I don’t want to speak about that right now. After a performance like today, it doesn’t make sense to speak about recruitment now. We should still be good enough with the team that we had available today in the first and in the second half to play better than we did. Again, full responsibility on my side for the performance. But again, it’s difficult – it’s really difficult to understand why we played like we did against Brentford on Monday and like we played today.

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