Van Gaal: United fans have right to be mad

Manchester United manager Louis Van Gaal admits the club’s supporters have every right to criticise his team following their 2-1 Europa League defeat to Midtjylland.

Despite an early goal from Memphis Depay, the Danish champions battled back with goals from Pione Sisto and Paul Onuachu either side of half-time to inflict European misery on United.

The travelling fans were upset at the 71 pound ticket price issued by Midtjylland and Van Gaal said he was ‘grateful’ for their support.

He cited numerous injuries and his side’s inability to win the second balls as reasons for the defeat.

“Yes the fans can criticise. They can do because when you see the second half maybe they are right. We have to improve and then the fans shall support us again. We have seen that in the 18 months I am here.

“They are disappointed like we are. I’m very grateful for the fans who supported us but we wanted to win and we have to win at Old Trafford and then we are in the next round. We have to do it but it’s not easy.

“Yes, I think it is the Law of Murphy. When you have 13 injured players. And I think a few minutes before the game we can add another player [David de Gea] to the list. Then it is difficult to cope with such a list of injured players. But nevertheless after 10 or 15 minutes we controlled the match, we scored a goal, but we also gave a goal away one minute before half-time. And that’s a difficult time to concede a goal.

“And in the second-half I have to say that Midtjylland was winning every ball. And that is very disappointed and disappointing. Because you know in advance that that is the key of this game. And then they score and you see how they score. But still we have a chance I think.

[On whether the opponents suprised him] “No, because we have analysed the players and we show the images of the players that we do usually. So the players know everything about Midtjylland.

Q. So nothing surprised you?

“No, nothing surprise.

[On why his players didn’t win the ‘second balls’] “Now I cannot answer that because we have to speak about that. Why our players were not capable to win these second balls and keep the ball in our position. Because also we had a lot of unnecessary losses of the ball. But now I can analyse that Midtjylland was winning these second balls and then you can expect that they score out of a few chance. But we could have scored also. [Jesse] Lingard could have scored also- two times I think. So in spite of that, we could have finished the game also.”

By Reuters