A lot has changed at Manchester United. A new manager has arrived. There have been a few new players through the door. High-profile players like Paul Pogba have left. However, if you watched the game on the weekend against Brighton, you probably felt like nothing has changed at all.
Before we get into the nitty-gritty, we must first give credit to Brighton. Brighton has proven itself to be a top team. They provide everyone in the Premier League with a tough game. However, Manchester United would have expected more when playing in front of their home crowd for the first game of the season. Surely they would have wanted to get their fans excited? Instead, the opposite happened.
But, what actually went wrong for Manchester United in their 2-1 loss? Let’s take a look:
The first goal knocked the team’s confidence
Manchester United’s captain, Harry Maguire, who has come under a lot of pressure lately, has spoken about the performance. He believes the team were playing well until they conceded. He said the following:
“I think we actually started the game pretty well. We started on the front foot, and we were the team that had control of the game.
“When we conceded the first goal it knocked us back really badly, we stopped playing from then, and they took control of the game.
“We need to look at not letting that first goal set us back as much as it did, but we also have to be better on the ball. We gave the ball away too much in that first half, especially after the first goal and we gave them encouragement to come forward and attack us.”
Defensive errors
There is certainly a lot that the Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag has to work on. Something that he has highlighted was the defensive errors that his team made during the game to concede two goals.
“We made mistakes on the ball and organization mistakes in defending. We have to take the lessons and learn quickly from it.
“Brighton are a decent team, all the compliments, but I look to my team, and we should not give two easy goals away.”
However, Ten Hag has said that while he is not satisfied with his team, he knew that it was not going to be an easy task to turn things around. We’re seeing that Manchester United is linked with a lot of players in the transfer market, with more to be done.
A lack of aggression
Another Manchester United player, Diogo Dalet, has said that he feels the team should be more aggressive.
“We let them play freely a couple of times and they play in behind. We could stop those counterattacks with a little bit more aggression.
“Like I said we did better in the second half, we kept more of the ball, we had a few more chances but not enough. We need to analyze what we did, and what we didn’t do right and try to improve for the next game.”
Can Manchester United bounce back?
We will certainly need to see significant improvements if Manchester United is going to win. As they say, there are no easy games in the Premier League.
This is a paid guest post.