Arsene Wenger has slammed Jadon Sancho, Diogo Dalot and Antony for letting Manchester United down in their humiliating 6-3 derby loss to bitter rivals City.
The Red Devils trio were exposed on multiple occasions during Sunday's drubbing, as Erling Haaland and Phil Foden both scored hat-tricks. Like many, Wenger picked up on how much joy City had down their flanks; with Pep Guardiola 's team using the likes Bernardo Silva, Kevin De Bruyne, Jack Grealish, Joao Cancelo and Sergio Gomez to punish Erik ten Hag 's men for their hapless defending.
The legendary former Arsenal manager laid the blame at Sancho and Dalot, the latter of whom was booked after less than two minutes. And despite scoring a spectacular consolation goal for United in the second half, Wenger also wasn't impressed by Antony's overall performance.
"What is for me unbelievable in the first half is that Man United has defended so badly on the flanks," the Frenchman began on beIN Sports. "From the first minute Dalot got a yellow card, and Sancho and Antony did not contribute defensively. They were, in the whole half, flooded on the flanks and they were always in trouble.
"After that, when they had the ball, I felt they were obsessed by respecting too much the game plan. They wanted always to go too quickly forward and lost so many balls and didn't have enough possession. They didn't play for possession, they wanted just to get on the counter-attack."
All four of the Red Devils' defenders hadn't started a Manchester derby before Sunday's mauling and it took just eight minutes to show. Silva's low cross was efficiently swept home by the sublime Foden before striking sensation Haaland converted from two inch-perfect De Bruyne deliveries later in the first half.
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Gomez then registered his first assist for City to set up Haaland's third goal of the day after the break, hammering home how United had failed in their attempts to neuter the Norwegian. In a concerning post-match admission, Ten Hag put his team's nightmare down to a "lack of belief."
"When you don't believe on the pitch then you can't win games, that is unacceptable," the Red Devils boss told BBC Sport. "We get undisciplined at following rules and you get hammered, that's happened today. All the credit to City, but it's nothing to do with City, our performance was not good. It had to do with the belief as individuals and as team.
"At half-time we changed things and we changed attitude. We saw a different Man United after half-time and we scored goals, we created some more. On the ball we were more brave, we came in the opponent's half and we scored three goals. In this moment I can't think about positives. We let our fans down, we let ourselves down and we're hugely disappointed."
