Erik ten Hag thanked Pep Guardiola and his Manchester City side for the brutal reality check they handed out to his Manchester United players with last Sunday's derby demolition.
Ten Hag's feeble United side were hammered 6-3 by Guardiola's City team at the Etihad Stadium, with the former admitting the chastening defeat showed just quite how far they remain behind their formidable local rivals.
United went into the derby on the back of four straight Premier League wins, including victories over Liverpool and leaders Arsenal, but were mercilessly dismantled by reigning champions City as striker Erling Haaland and midfielder Ben Foden both helped themselves to hat-tricks.
Ten Hag, whose United side face Omonoia in Cyprus in the Europa League on Thursday, said the manner of the defeat to City underlined the scale of the challenge facing him, his staff and players.
“You beat Arsenal, you beat Liverpool, now we get a reality check with City, so we know we have to step up,” said Ten Hag. “So, thank-you for the lesson, Pep and City, we will take that, and we have to understand that we have to do things much better.
“I know when you’re in a process it will not go only up, that you will have setbacks. We beat the No.1 team in the league, Arsenal, we beat Liverpool, but on Sunday we had a bad at the office and we got beaten. On that day, City were better. We have to accept that, but we can’t accept our performance, because that was unacceptable.”
Bruno Fernandes, captaining the team in the absence of Harry Maguire, said United must not lose sight of the progress they have made under Ten Hag, despite such a heavy defeat.
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“The confidence has grown, we’ve been doing really well, so we can’t just throw everything away because of one result,” said Fernandes.
"We didn’t when we lost the first two games and we shouldn’t do it now. Everyone knows what we have to do, it’s about getting back to the wins and having belief in the process. We were doing really well in the previous games before City. It's a setback, but you have to get up.”
Ten Hag and his players held a brutal inquest into the derby debacle, watching the game back and analysing their mistakes in a meeting that lasted almost three hours.
“We had a meeting, we went to see the tough things, the mistakes that we made,” said Fernandes. “We know what the mistakes were and now, more than talking about the mistakes, just don’t repeat them again.
"Everyone knows when you start getting good results - and we will get a good result tomorrow - we'll be back, that's the most important thing. The main thing now is to get back on the winning track and carry on.”
