In all of the praise that Erik ten Hag gave his team after the 1-0 win over Southampton, there was one line that was a bit of a tell: “I think we did a lot better than against Brentford.”
That wouldn’t be hard, and is a very low base, but it does illustrate a wider point. One of the reasons that 4-0 defeat to Brentford was so bad – even beyond the sensation of Manchester United losing like that – was because it all came from a side that was failing to do the very fundamentals of his system.
