Ten Hag tells Man Utd flops ‘everyone must take responsibility’

Dutchman’s side have slipped to eight in the table after away defeat to West Ham

Erik ten Hag has warned his Manchester United flops that they cannot feel sorry for themselves as he weighed up the club’s worst pre-Christmas run since 1930.
United fell to their 13th defeat of the season in all competitions at West Ham United, which is their worst run before Christmas Day in 93 years and Ten Hag watched his team fail to score a goal for the fourth successive match.
Left-back Luke Shaw admitted it is hard for the United players to find many positives at the moment, but manager Ten Hag insisted they must not let their heads drop.
“We have to play two more games this week, but we can’t feel sorry for ourselves, no-one,” said Ten Hag. “We have to take responsibility. If you are playing for Manchester United, we have to do it together and everyone has to be accountable and take responsibility.”
Asked whether it is hard to remain positive amid such a bad run of form, Shaw said: “Yeah, it is, but it’s our job. We have to stay positive. This is Manchester United, one of the biggest clubs in the world, and like I said before it’s not good enough. We know that and we have to dig deep, look ourselves in the mirror and question ourselves and go from there.”
Second-half goals from Jarrod Bowen and Mohammed Kudus clinched victory for West Ham and, assessing the defeat by West Ham, Shaw said: “[It was] just not good enough really. We have to win games. We keep losing games, losing points and we’re making it very hard for ourselves. Especially that second-half, not good enough.
“First half, I think we controlled the game. If we score the first goal then maybe the result’s different but we don’t so we suffered in the second-half and it’s not good enough.”
Striker Rasmus Hojlund, United’s £72 million summer signing, is yet to score or assist in the Premier League, while Marcus Rashford, who replaced the Dane as a substitute, has just two League goals.
“I think he [Hojlund] is a very strong character and he can deal with the stress,” said Ten Hag. “I took him off as he was ill during the week, so there was a little bit of lack of power. So in that sense I protected him.”
Asked if he needs a new striker in January, Ten Hag replied: “As I said before, we have players who can do it. They proved it in the past they can do it, but we also have to acknowledge the facts that we didn’t do as a team and we have to take responsibility and of course, football is about winning games and is about scoring goals.”