{"id":175813,"date":"2025-09-28T19:01:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T19:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/175813\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T19:01:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T19:01:06","slug":"forget-amorims-system-man-utd-players-get-blame-de-ligt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/175813\/","title":{"rendered":"Forget Amorim’s ‘system,’ Man Utd players get blame – De Ligt"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matthijs de Ligt<\/a> insists Manchester United<\/a> players must take responsibility for poor results amid growing pressure on manager Ruben Amorim.<\/p>\n

United suffered a third defeat in six Premier League<\/a> games this season in losing 3-1 at Brentford<\/a> on Saturday, while they were also humiliated by League Two Grimsby in the Carabao Cup<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Portuguese boss Amorim has yet to oversee back-to-back league wins during his 10 months in charge and, after last term’s 15th-placed finish – their lowest position since 1989-90 – United again reside in the bottom half of the table.<\/p>\n

“Of course, I mean it’s always easy to look to the manager, but in the end the players on the pitch have to do it,” said centre-back De Ligt.<\/p>\n

“We can’t say the goals we conceded, or the chances we conceded, are because of what… I don’t know, you guys always talk about the system.<\/p>\n

Man United’s players must take responsibility, says Matthijs de Ligt.\u00a0Justin Setterfield\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

“That also has a lot to do with focus, concentration and, if that’s lacking in key moments, it’s going to make a difference.”<\/p>\n

United had seemingly built confidence by beating Chelsea<\/a> 2-1 a week earlier, albeit they enjoyed a numerical advantage for most of the first half of that Old Trafford contest due to Robert Sanchez’s early red card.<\/p>\n

But that victory was a distant memory as Brentford striker Igor Thiago<\/a> scored twice inside 20 minutes and, after Benjamin Sesko<\/a> had pulled one back with his first United goal, Bruno Fernandes<\/a> failed to equalise from the penalty spot in the final quarter as Caoimh\u00edn Kelleher<\/a> saved.<\/p>\n

It was the United captain’s second spot-kick miss of the season in west London after blazing over at Fulham<\/a> last month.<\/p>\n

De Ligt said: “[We are] really disappointed because all week we were speaking about keeping the momentum going, getting another win under our belt.<\/p>\n

“If you lose this game, it’s a big blow obviously. A lot of lot of time (it is) the same song, but we have to stick together. It’s the most important thing.<\/p>\n

“We lost against [Manchester] City, we won against Chelsea, so for the next game, we have to analyse what went wrong in this game because a lot of things went wrong.<\/p>\n

“We were short in key moments where we made the wrong decisions.<\/p>\n

“That makes a big difference in football. We were quite unlucky also with some chances, but overall, it was not good enough. That’s a fact.”<\/p>\n

United host in-form Sunderland<\/a> on Saturday and visit league leaders Liverpool<\/a> straight after the international break on October 19.<\/p>\n

On a day that United summer signing Bryan Mbeumo<\/a> returned to Brentford after spending six years at the club, Thiago took centre stage.<\/p>\n

– Amorim ‘not concerned’ over Man United future<\/a>
– Dawson: Struggling Brentford deepen Amorim’s malaise<\/a>
– Transfer rumours: Liverpool to rival Man United for Branthwaite<\/a><\/p>\n

The Brazilian forward, signed from Club Brugge<\/a> for a then-club record \u00a330 million in July 2023, has scored five goals this season, four of them in the Premier League.<\/p>\n

Bees boss Keith Andrews said of Thiago: “Selfless, I think, would be the first thing that springs to mind.<\/p>\n

“Always puts the team first, sometimes at the detriment of his own performance. I think he’s such a team player.<\/p>\n

“He’s getting real rhythm in his game now and confidence in his game, and he’s shown exactly what he’s all about and why the football club brought him here.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matthijs de Ligt insists Manchester United players must take responsibility for poor results amid growing pressure on manager…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-175813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}