Sticking with Man United's Anfield flops was clever from Erik ten Hag

IAN LADYMAN: Sticking with Man United’s Anfield flops – and Bruno Fernandes as captain – was clever from Erik ten Hag, but he must rotate… and WHY should Wout Weghorst have to explain himself?

• Manchester United lost 7-0 against Liverpool but beat Real Betis 4-1 on Thursday
• The best thing Ten Hag did was keep the same team for the Europa League game
• However, the United manager must rotate his squad moving forwards this term

Perhaps the cleverest thing Erik ten Hag did between Manchester United’s annihilation at Liverpool and last night’s game against Real Betis was pick the same thing.

Managers can only say much on the back of something like last Sunday’s defeat. It’s what they actually do that matters.

Ten Hag, the United manager, could have dropped players. He would not have been short of candidates. He could have taken the captaincy of Bruno Fernandes. The Portuguese could not have complained.

Instead Ten Hag simply gave the shirts back to the same eleven players and asked them to go and do better. There was one tactical switch with Wout Weghorst playing through the middle as a traditional centre forward and Marcus Rashford and Antony sitting either side. All three players scored so we can say it worked.

Apart from that Ten Hag just asked for improvement and that is what he got. It was a simple decision but also quite clever. Not only did it show confidence in his players, it also gave them the opportunity to get the Anfield disaster out of their system.

Perhaps the cleverest thing Erik ten Hag did between Manchester United’s annihilation at Liverpool and last night’s game against Real Betis was pick the same thing

Manchester United lost 7-0 against Liverpool but bounced back to beat Real Betis 4-1

What will be interesting to see now is what Ten Hag does on Sunday against Southampton. It’s not the most daunting Premier League fixture but it still needs to be won. United’s season continues to move forward on three fronts – Premier League, Europa League and FA Cup – and how Ten Hag manages his squad and tweaks his team will be decisive in terms of how it turns out.

United have thirteen leagues games left to play and could yet have as many as nine cup fixtures if they reach two finals. That’s 22 games in two and half months. United need to continue to avoid big injuries and Ten Hag must rotate sensibly if they are to succeed. Former United midfielder Paul Scholes said on TV that he thought United looked ‘shattered’ in the Liverpool game and that sounded telling.

UNITED STARTING XI AGAINST LIVERPOOL AND REAL BETIS

Manchester United vs Liverpool: De Gea; Dalot, Varane, Martinez, Shaw; Casemiro, Fred; Antony, Weghorst, Fernandes; Rashford 

Manchester United vs Real Betis: De Gea; Dalot, Varane, Martinez, Shaw; Casemiro, Fred; Antony, Weghorst, Fernandes; Rashford 

Aswell as doing everything wrong during the actual game against Liverpool, it appears some United players couldn’t do anything right beforehand either.

Wout Weghorst, for example, has been criticised for reaching up and touching the ‘This is Anfield’ sign on his way on to the field. A shameful display of treachery, apparently.

Weghorst’s subsequent explanation feels contrived. He was doing it to wind up his Dutch team-mate – and rival on the day – Virgil van Dijk. Really?

But that doesn’t matter. Why should Weghorst have to explain himself anyway?

Weghorst is a journeyman footballer. He has played 18 times for Holland during some fallow years for his country but his club career has featured only outposts.

Wout Weghorst, for example, has been criticised for reaching up and touching the ‘This is Anfield’ sign on his way on to the field. A shameful display of treachery, apparently

Emmen, Heracles Almelo, AZ Alkmaar, Wolfsburg, Burnley, Besiktas. So ever since he was invited to join United on a short loan in January, he has looked like a footballer determined to wring every drop of enjoyment and life experience out of an opportunity he never once dreamed would come his way.

Watching him after United had beaten Newcastle in the Carabao Cup Final, he celebrated the hardest. After he scored his first Old Trafford goal last night, he reacted as though it had just won United the Europa League all on its own.

But that Wembley medal seemed to mean the world to the 30-year-old and when you look at his CV it becomes apparent why. For, eleven years after his professional debut and after in the region of 350 league games for seven clubs, that was the first thing he had ever won. Why knows, it may also transpire be the last.

So Weghorst looks like an athlete enjoying himself and if that touch of a simple sign at Anfield is part of that process then why should he apologise?

He is not the best player at United and he won’t be around next season when his loan runs out. But few are currently working harder and it’s hard not to admire him.

When Manchester United played Leicester recently, they were not at the races in the early stages of the game. Had David de Gea not made two exceptional early saves, a Premier League game they eventually won comfortably could have been different.

Last night against Real Betis, we saw the other side of the United goalkeeper. His distribution with his feet has never been good and is now getting worse. With United drawing 1-1 and with a game that had started well now in the balance, De Gea passed a simple clearance straight to a Betis player and a couple of seconds later goalscorer Ayoze Perez had struck the post at the Stretford End.

So United – having controlled the game early on – were six inches or so of going in at half-time a goal behind.

David de Gea made two exceptional early saves when Manchester United played Leicester

These are the two sides of United’s goalkeeper. Over the last decade the Spaniard has saved them so many points, won them so many games. His shot stopping, athleticism and reflexes remain almost peerless.

However bad things have been at times since Sir Alex Ferguson left a decade ago, they would have been worse had it not been for the goalkeeper United signed from Atletico Madrid for just under £20m eleven years ago.

But De Gea is 32 now and at that age his kicking is not going to get better. In fact it’s wrong to call it kicking. It’s actually his passing. Some goalkeepers just cannot do that and as such have not been able to cope with the way the game has changed at the highest level. It is one of the reasons Joe Hart’s career decelerated so quickly. It is something that may yet cost Nick Pope a good many England caps.

At United it is a deficiency that will not cost De Gea is place in Erik ten Hag’s team. He remains too good at the other stuff for that. But one day De Gea’s unpredictability with his feet will cost United for sure.

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