Bruno Fernandes has claimed that Manchester United's players lacked 'attitude and belief' in the Manchester derby.
United prepared for the derby with a degree of optimism earlier this week, but they were quickly brought back down to earth after four successive Premier League wins with an embarrassing 6-3 defeat against rivals Manchester City at the Etihad.
Erik ten Hag's side were four goals down at half-time on Sunday afternoon after Erling Haaland and Phil Foden scored two each in the first half. Although United showed character in the second half, the result was already beyond them after a disastrous first 45 minutes.
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Antony scored for United after the break and Anthony Martial netted a brace but those goals were mere consolations. Fernandes reflected on the defeat after the final whistle and he explained the 'attitude' and 'belief' of his teammates was poor.
"I think the attitude and the belief from the beginning was not the best," Fernandes told MUTV. "I think that caused us many problems and made us concede early goals. I think the second half was much better, we kept control more.
"Whenever we had the ball we were braver. Obviously, we were down so we needed to take some risks and when we take those risks we scored straight away, try to go a little bit more and concede more goals. Against teams like City, you cannot give them that much space.
"We are really disappointed, but now is the time to focus on the next game and understand that we have to get back to the performances we did before, with the belief, the togetherness and understand this can not get us down and has to make us improve.
"After this result, we knew it was going to be a tough game, but we’ve had tough games before and we have won it, so I think it’s about mentality, attitude and togetherness and belief in the process. It’s a good thing [many games in October].
"You don’t have that much time to recover but at the same time you have to understand you have a chance to get a result, a good performance to give more confidence to the team. It’s about going into the Europa League now and winning the next game."
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