“I think our mentality…”: United star lambasts team’s second-half performance in dismal defeat to Newcastle

Manchester United failed to make their man advantage count, losing 1-2 at the hands of Newcastle United at St James’ Park on Wednesday. With the Magpies having to play the entire second half with 10 men, it was expected that the visitors would pepper their goal with shots. It turned out to be the opposite, with the home side looking far the better team, and in the end, they deserved the three points. The midfield lacked fight, while Bryan Mbeumo was anonymous out wide. It almost seemed like the players were happy with the point, and they were punished as a result. Senne Lammens admits every player had an off day Senne Lammens was naturally disappointed with the result, and he even called out his teammates for their lacklustre second half performance. “It is always a bad feeling to lose. It was nowhere near good enough. We have to learn a lot from today but we have to look through it. Everyone has an off day, we had a collective off day which you can’t really do at a place like this. “We need to go back to the basics of before. Hopefully this is just a one off, we can learn from this, get the momentum again and get back to winning.” The Belgian was also a bit taken aback by the attitude from his teammates in the second 45 minutes, especially after United equalised late in the first half. Dismal second half display had Senne Lammens shocked Most fans would have expected the 20-time English league champions to come out all guns blazing. It was anything but. “We scored our goal just before half-time and it was really important to give us a good feeling going into half time. “When we step out on the pitch for the second half it needs to be better, I think our mentality needs to be better. In every aspect it was not our game today.” Michael Carrick needs to get the team’s act together ahead of their pivotal clash against Aston Villa on Sunday. His future depends on it. Feature image Carl Recine via Getty Images The Peoples Person has been one of the world’s leading Man United news sites for over a decade. Follow us on Bluesky: @peoplesperson.bsky.social Ayantan Chowdhury After failing to become a professional footballer, Ayantan switched to the next best thing: writing about the greatest football club in the world. He has extensive sports journalism experience, having worked for over 10 years in the Indian sports media industry, writing for the biggest newspapers and websites. Currently an editor at The Peoples Person. You can follow him on X: @ayantanc_25