Erik ten Hag refuted the claim that Sunday’s 6-3 loss at Manchester City was more worrisome than Manchester United’s shaky 3-2 victory at Omonia Nicosia.
At the GSP Stadium, United fell behind to a Karim Ansarifard goal on minute 33 when Bruno Felipe ran free with no defender in his path of David de Gea’s goal. Ten Hag’s team thereafter lost their composure until the half. Omonia entered the Group E encounter with just one victory in their previous 26 games in actual European competition. Given all of this, the manager was informed that the performance was just as concerning as the derby defeat at the Etihad Stadium.
No, he answered. I believe the first 10 minutes after we gave up the goal were horrible. Making chances against a team that is so compact is difficult, but we made enough of them. And when you lose to a foe like this, they become more motivated to fight for their lives. If you are able to return, you will have given the performance you require—a victory. You can’t compare this to the game on Sunday, but we overcame the setback and came back, which is encouraging mentally.
Both Tyrell Malacia and Jadon Sancho contributed to Ansarifard’s opening goal. Ten Hag was questioned about why Luke Shaw and Marcus Rashford were substituted in for them at halftime. The Dutchman stated, “It wasn’t what I was upset with; it was our ball movement, the width on the left side, for me, was no good first half. “The movement from behind the defending line, so with Luke and Marcus we may get greater influence from that and in my perspective that happens,” the player said.
Anthony Martial and Marcus Rashford both scored once during United’s comeback, with Nikolas Panagiotou scoring Omonia’s second goal toward the finish. With the victory, United has six points after three contests.
Ten Hag described the overall performance as “[We] stay composed.” This is always possible because football is a game of errors. The only thing we didn’t accomplish during the opening 30 minutes of play was score a goal, which would have made everything much easier for us. We didn’t, and then we gave up a goal, and those were our worst 10 minutes of the game. We handled the setback nicely after halftime.
