MY ACCOUNT
Ralf Rangnick criticised his Manchester United stars for playing “tiki-taka” football and lacking urgency at crucial times in the draw at Burnley.
The 1-1 outcome at Turf Moor allowed West Ham to jump above United into fourth place in the Premier League, with Arsenal and Tottenham in pursuit of both.
Burnley sit bottom of the league and rode their luck as United had two first-half goals disallowed, leading only by a Paul Pogba strike as the interval arrived.
But the Clarets started the first half positively and were level inside two minutes as Jay Rodriguez fired past David de Gea.
Interim manager Rangnick said he warned his players to be on guard for a fired-up Burnley at the start of the second half; therefore, to concede so early was an annoyance to the German boss.
He told BBC Sport: “We knew they would come out of the locker room in a more aggressive way. This is the only thing I can blame the team for; in the first 20 minutes of the second half we were not as aggressive as in the first half.
“The way that we conceded the goal was completely unnecessary. We had our own counter-attack 30 seconds before and in that moment we were two or three players more in our own half, took wrong decisions in the defensive behaviour and in a way gave the goal away to them.
“If you look into the whole game we dominated most of the game, 70 minutes, and winning only one point is just not enough: a very frustrating night again.”
Rangnick added: “In the first two minutes [of the second half] we won the ball three times and gave it away too easily because we were playing tiki-taka football in our own half, and we were not direct enough and stringent enough in the way we try to play forward.
“Then we had the counter-attack with Jadon [Sancho] and with Marcus [Rashford] and again gave the ball away too easily in their box. The first 20 minutes of the second half we were not as aggressive and not as controlled as we were in the first half, and that’s why we gave them the chance to score.”
United have home games coming up against Southampton and Brighton, on Saturday and Tuesday.
Rangnick told MUTV the Burnley result made it “even more important to get six points out of those two games”.
