Bruno Fernandes and Noussair Mazraoui both acknowledged Manchester United were not good enough after Ruben Amorim’s stumbling side lost Sunday’s derby at Manchester City.
Things have rarely been straightforward since Sir Alex Ferguson retired and scrutiny is intensifying on the position of the United’s sixth permanent manager since the Scot left in 2013.
Amorim oversaw United’s worst top-flight season in 51 years and Sunday’s 3-0 derby defeat at City left them on just four points after four Premier League matches this term, compounding their Carabao Cup humiliation at Grimsby.
The defiant Portuguese said the club will have to sack him before he changes his philosophy following Sunday’s loss at the Etihad Stadium, where captain Fernandes acknowledged the side were below par.
“You have to look at what we did well,” he told Sky Sports. “It was obviously not enough because you want to win football games, not see the positives from the game. What we did here was not enough to get the result. All we have to got to take from this game is obviously to look at what we need to do better and go forward to the next game.”
“We need to score goals and not to concede. It is the main thing of football. We keep creating chances to score and we are not able to score as many as we wanted. We have to be more in control of certain situations. We conceded three goals that should have been avoided.”
United defender Mazraoui echoed the skipper’s sentiments after his first start of the season ended in disappointment.
“We’re in an important season, of course,” he told MUTV. “In the start of the season still. We try to improve as a team, especially after everything that happened. But, yeah, a derby makes it even more special, more emotional. If you lose and you’ve played good and you have the chances that we created the last games, you can maybe accept it because they’re still improving. But today was just not good enough.”
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United have to wait until Saturday to put things right as last season’s failures mean they are without European football for the first time since 2014-15.
Chelsea, and former United winger Alejandro Garnacho, are the visitors next weekend and Mazraoui says they have to learn from the City setback.
“It is always hard to say [where it went wrong] because of course you are always full of emotion straight after the game,” Mazraoui said. I always try to calm down and try to analyse the game of course and then see really what went wrong because otherwise I am just going to point fingers, but probably eventually it’s not even the guys or something that I point out now.”
“I am going to analyse that for myself, I think we are going to analyse as a team and then try to improve.”
