Manchester United left-back and England international Luke Shaw has admitted that the Liverpool result was on the cards before the game.
Shaw told Malaysian TV channel Stadium Astro, via The Athletic, that United were too easy to play against and questioned whether he and the whole squad were doing the right things in preparation for their games.
Looking at Shaw’s quotes, he seems to strongly hint that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s tactics have not been working, making Man Utd too easy to defend against and making the result against Liverpool inevitable, to a certain extent.
The 26-year-old also says the players have to look at themselves, however, but it’s striking that he feels they haven’t been playing well for some time, which perhaps points towards issues with how the manager is preparing them.
He said: “I think it’s ourselves that we need to look at, first and foremost, in the mirror.
“Are we doing everything right and preparing right for the games in ourselves?
“Of course we have the tactics and how the manager wants us to play, but I think at times we’re way too easy to play against.”
Shaw was one of the main culprits of United’s shoddy performance yesterday, as he and Harry Maguire were constantly targeted and exposed on the Liverpool right.
The United performance has been dubbed as the worst in United’s Premier League history by some, and to be fair you would be hard-pressed to find a worse performance than the one produced on Sunday.
Let's not mess about here, this is probably the worst team performance in the history of the Premier League. Results can be misleading – the 1-6 to Man City was 1-3 going into stoppage time, the performance wasn't THAT bad – but this is a humiliation, 10 times worse than that.
— Michael Cox (@Zonal_Marking) October 24, 2021
Shaw later added: “I think also maybe we can say this result was coming.
“I think in past games where we’ve won, we haven’t been at our best and we know that.
“We felt that inside the dressing room and today we need to reflect and we have to move on from this because it hurts.”
Man United now find themselves with numerous unwanted defensive records to their name, including the fewest tackles in the Premier League, the most errors leading to shots, the 15th highest Expected Goals against value, and the 14th most shots on target faced. All this culminates in United having the 16th worst defensive record in the Premier League this season.
Looking at the numbers, #MUFC defensive horror show against #LFC was predictable ?
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) October 25, 2021
If United do not improve soon then all their aspirations for this season will be gone before they can recover.
And time is already rapidly running out this season, with Manchester City, Chelsea, and Liverpool all likely to carry on picking up points in the coming weeks while United have a tough run of fixtures.