Man Utd star responds to Ruben Amorim criticism after latest nightmare loss

Ruben Amorim continues to struggle as Manchester United manager (Picture: Getty Images)

Manchester United defender Matthijs de Ligt has defended his manager, Ruben Amorim, saying the players were to blame for Saturday’s defeat at Brentford.

After an encouraging win over Chelsea last weekend, the Red Devils were back to losing ways in London as they were beaten 3-1 by the Bees.

Igor Thiago scored twice to put the home side 2-0 up after just 20 minutes, before Benjamin Sesko kept United’s hopes alive with his first goal for the club.

However, a missed Bruno Fernandes penalty and a stoppage time Mathias Jensen goal saw Brentford pick up a valuable win and leave Manchester United 14th in the table after six games.

The pressure continues to mount on Amorim, who has won just nine of his 33 Premier League games in charge of the Red Devils.

His 3-4-3 formation continues to come in for criticism, but De Ligt says that is not the problem, feeling the players should be taking the blame for yet another poor performance on Saturday.

‘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 the Dutch defender.

Matthijis de Ligt has had an underwhelming spell at Man Utd so far (Picture: Getty Images)

‘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.

‘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.’

Amorim’s side have conceded 11 goals in their six league outings so far this season, scoring just seven.

De Ligt added: ‘Really disappointed because all week we were speaking about keeping the momentum going, getting another win under our belt.

‘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.

‘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.

‘We were short in key moments where we made the wrong decisions.

‘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.’

Gary Neville was left extremely concerned by Amorim’s decision-making in the defeat to Brentford and suggested the Portuguese is unlikely to be in the job too much longer.

‘I am very worried, there is no point in me sitting here and saying I’m not,’ the Red Devils legend told NBC. ‘The levels of performance, the results and the substitutions yesterday. I saw something at the end of the Grimsby game that they lost in the Carabao Cup a couple of weeks ago which was Mason Mount ending up at left wing-back.

‘We admire managers who are stubborn and resilient around their system, we want them to stick to their plan, but when you have Mason Mount playing at left-back you are going to look pretty stupid.

Manchester United host Sunderland next weekend (Picture: Getty Images)

‘It has happened twice now and it can’t happen. The first time I thought it was unforgivable and yesterday it happened again.

‘He changes his back three and his back five every single game and the performances and the results are just unacceptable.

‘I’m really, really worried. I would never go on television as I know how difficult a manager’s job can be and say a manager should be sacked, but I suspect the hierarchy at Manchester United are going to want to see a turnaround.’

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