Manchester United captain Bruno Fernandes has blamed his side’s lack of aggression on their 2-0 defeat at the hands of Crystal Palace.
Jean-Philippe Mateta’s second-half brace condemned United to an 11th top-flight loss of the campaign.
The result also saw United drop down to 13th position in the Premier League table, with Palace leapfrogging them.
After the final whistle, Fernandes spoke to MUTV and had his say on the match and what went wrong for the Red Devils on their own turf.
He said, “Of course, we spoke after the games that we won that, everything we do in the past will be forgotten, if we do not win the next one.”
“Today is the case and everyone [knew] what had to focus on this one to get three points in the Premier League.”
“Everyone was aware of that and it is a different competition where we have and needed to win to get three points. Unfortunately, today, we didn’t get the three points.”
The Portugal international added, “We lacked a little bit of aggression to get into the final third and try something to score goals.”
“We need the players we have in front to get more goals, to create more and we need to be able to take players on to get goals from that. We did have some chances but not as many as we should have.”
Fernandes emphasised the importance of positive results on team confidence.
“You build with the results and, when you win you games, you get more confident. Obviously, we won the last two games and everyone was pretty confident on what we [do] as everyone believes more when you are winning games in what you are doing.”
“For us, now it is a setback but we need to understand we have been doing good things and, even today, we showed some good things. Obviously, the result doesn’t show that but we need to be aware that we can achieve a lot with the things that we have been doing.”
United are back in action on Friday when they host Ruud van Nistelrooy’s Leicester City in the fourth round of the FA Cup.
Featured image Michael Regan via Getty Images
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Derick Kinoti
Derick Kinoti is a football writer at The Peoples Person who has covered Manchester United and the game extensively for many years. He is a keen analyst with expertise in SEO and journalism standards. Derick is convinced Wayne Rooney is the true GOAT and won’t hear otherwise!
