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Bruno Fernandes has criticised Manchester United’s lack of control in Sunday’s 3-0 defeat at Manchester City, the captain stating that each of the goals his team conceded at the Etihad Stadium could have been avoided.
Phil Foden’s header came after Jérémy Doku moved too easily past Luke Shaw, while Doku’s assist for Erling Haaland’s first goal derived from the space allowed by United’s defence. The Norwegian’s second goal was a breakaway finish, and against resulted from suspect defending by the visitors. Defeat leaves United with four points from their opening four games of the season.
“We have to be more in control of certain situations,” said Fernandes. “We conceded three goals that should have been avoided. We keep creating chances to score and we are not able to score as many as we wanted. What we did was not enough to get the result.
“All we have to take from this game is to look at what we need to do better and go forward to the next game. We need to score goals and not concede. It is the main thing of football.”
Noussair Mazraoui conceded that United’s derby display was unacceptable. “I am feeling bad,” the wing-back told MUTV. “[I’m] disappointed in myself, in the team, and disappointed for the fans that we couldn’t bring the performance we did lately. A derby makes it more special, more emotional, so if you lose and you have played good and you have the chances we created in the last games, you can maybe accept it because there are still improvements. But [against City] was just not good enough.”
“It is hard to say [what went wrong] because you are always full of emotion straight after the game, so I try to calm down and analyse the game,” added Mazraoui. “Otherwise I will point fingers and probably eventually it is not [actually] the guys or something that I point out now. I will analyse it myself and [with the] team and try to improve.”
Matthijs de Ligt echoed his teammates’ sentiment that United must improve. “We have to get better,” said the centre-back. “We have to prove it, otherwise it’s no use. In the first half, they [City] were the better team. But they didn’t have a lot of chances – I felt we had a lot of opportunities to create chances. We just couldn’t make the last ball count. In the second half, they scored the 2-0 pretty quickly.
“But then we went 3-0 down in a rather clumsy fashion – we played better in the second half but they were definitely much better. And they have quality players up front. That makes all the difference.”
