Another alibi statement? Manchester United didn’t beat Chelsea, they were the worse team, yet the Hag is clear: We played great, we deserved to win

Thursday night offered a spectacular showpiece in the 31st round of the Premier League, with Manchester United taking on Chelsea in London. The Blues produced a great finish to win 4-3. Coach Erik ten Hag surprised with his post-match comments.

The fans are arguing. The match of the season or, tactically speaking, a two-sided horror? “Accidentally, for a match without coaches, a nice spectacle,” some of them commented on the Chelsea vs Manchester United battle.

The duel offered several twists and turns. Chelsea were already up by two goals after 19 minutes, courtesy of Conor Gallagher and Cole Palmer. However, at the end of the first half Manchester United equalised thanks to goals from Alejandro Garnacha and Bruno Fernandes.

In the 67th minute, Garnacho scored his second goal of the game to send the Red Devils ahead for the first time in the match for the last time. The 3: 2 scoreline for Erik ten Hag’s charges lasted until set time, but there came a shocking finish by the Blues.

In the 10th minute of the set time, Palmer converted the penalty that was ordered, and a minute later he completed the turnaround to 4: 3 and completed his hat-trick. Mauricio Pochettino’s team had already taken the lead and earned an important three points.

The duel was quite wild. The first half was statistically even, whether we look at shots (11:13), shots on target (4:4), xG (1.42 to 0.91) or possession (47 to 53%).

In the second half, however, it was a ride by Chelsea, who held the ball 67% of the time, sending 17 shot attempts compared to 6 by the Red Devils, with Manchester United only once going between the three posts, while the Blues went six times. Even the xG stat was more than twice as good for Pochettino’s team.

Manchester United deserved to win, says Erik ten Hag

Despite all of the above, the Red Devils coach once again had words of praise for his team. It’s not the first time this season that fans and pundits have wondered about his statements.

“We started badly, we got rid of the ball easily, we defended badly, but you saw that we dominated the game after that. It was great the way we played. We deserved to win,” Erik ten Hag was quoted as saying to TNT Sports.

“Unfortunately, you can’t lose a game like that. We have to handle situations like that better. You can point to one of the players, but it’s about team performance. When the game starts getting messy, you have to deal with it as a team. We made bad decisions, we didn’t help ourselves. We made mistakes in possession of the ball, we didn’t have enough concentration,” he added.

Besides, the coach doesn’t agree much with the fact that Chelsea should have kicked a penalty at the end. In his opinion, the penalty was questionable.

Source: Premier League, Fabrizio Romano, Twitter, Goal