Manchester United midfielder Donny van de Beek has not held back in his criticism of how the Red Devils played in their surprise 2-1 defeat against Istanbul Basaksehir last night.
Following their Premier League defeat to Arsenal at the weekend, United were once again poor and lost this Champions League group game, spoiling the superb start they’d made by beating tougher opponents in Paris Saint-Germain and RB Leipzig.
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Van de Beek has shone at this level with previous club Ajax, playing a key role in taking them to the semi-finals back in 2018/19, and it’s clear he wasn’t impressed with United’s performance in Turkey last night.
Speaking after the game, as quoted by the Manchester Evening News, the Dutchman laid into the players for dropping off after conceding, and for not creating enough on the night.
“I need to say I’m really disappointed,” he said. “We started okay, the first 10 minutes, and then we give a goal away, I don’t know how. And after that we lost confidence and we can play much better.
“We are a team and everyone has a responsibility. We can play much better. I had a feeling [when Martial scored] that there was lots of space to create something, but today we created not many chances.
“For them it’s a really nice win and for us, it’s really disappointing. We need to improve a lot.
“We are Man United and we need to improve. The Arsenal game is the same, we have to step up for the game against Everton.”
This seems a frank but fair assessment from Van de Beek, who has perhaps indicated here that he’s got the right mentality to be a leader for Man Utd on the pitch.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer hasn’t started the 23-year-old in a lot of games this season, but should perhaps show a bit more faith in him as he was one of few United players to emerge with any credit last night.