Ralf Rangnick claims Manchester United’s season never recovered from losing to Atletico Madrid in the Champions League as he gave Erik ten Hag an insight into the "biggest issue" in the club's dressing room.
Rangnick has been giving new incoming boss Ten Hag his thoughts on what needs to be done at Old Trafford and he feels the Atletico setback was pivotal.
The Spanish side dumped them out of the Champions League in mid-March and Rangnick says that really impacted on United’s team spirt and mentality. The United interim boss felt they were doing well up until that moment when their season went into decline.
United have blown their hopes of qualifying for next season’s Champions League and need to beat Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park on Sunday to make sure of making the Europa League. “We have to see it in different areas and periods of time,” said Rangnick when asked to say what has been his biggest frustration from his six months in charge. Since we dropped out against Atletico, we have lost confidence and energy in the team.
“Until then I think we stabilised the team defensively, compared to the team that shipped four goals against Watford away. Until then we were more stable defensively. What didn’t happen in this development was for it to happen in a consistent, stable way. Either we had problems to score goals or preventing goals being scored against us. Since the Atletico game we didn’t find our shape, our form again.
“This has to to do with confidence, also a little bit with mentality, team spirit, togetherness. We just fell short in those areas. For me the biggest disappointment is we didn’t manage to develop a certain team spirit that helped us in different parts of the game. This happens to other teams but, for me, this is the biggest issue.”
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Rangnick claims United’s injury problems have not improved and Jadon Sancho and Phil Jones had to cut short training on Friday because of issues. Luke Shaw is also a doubt for Palace because his wife has just given birth to their second child. But he insists the players are still determined to atone for their drubbing by Brighton last time out and salvage something from the season by ensuring they qualify for the Europa League rather than Conference League.
“We once again unfortunately have quite a few missing and another couple with questions marks, so we have to wait for tomorrow’s last training session,” he said. “I’m still positive there will be a strong starting line-up and that we can finish the season on a higher note than at Brighton.
“I think the players want to get things right and do things better than at Brighton. I’m also positive they would rather play in the Europa League rather than the Conference League. I think it is a big difference if a club like Manchester United plays in Europa League than the Conference League. You could see a club like Frankfurt, who finished in lower half of Bundesliga, but won the Europa League and so qualified for Champions League and this should also be an incentive for us.”
