Moyes Berates Manchester United’s Defence Following 2-2 Home Draw to Fulham
David Moyes described his Manchester United team’s defending as “diabolical” after they conceded a dramatic injury-time equaliser to bottom-of-the-table Fulham to continue the new manager’s misery.
Just after Steve Sidwell’s first-half goal for Fulham, United took the lead within less than two minutes with goals from Robin van Persie and Michael Carrick. Then, in the seventh of 13 home league games at Old Trafford this season that they have failed to win, Darren Bent capitalised on mistakes by Carrick and Nemanja Vidic to score an equaliser.
At this stage last season, after 25 games, United were top of the table with 62 points, 21 more than they currently have. Asked afterwards whether he ever thought his first season at United would have gone so badly, Moyes said, “probably not”
“Even when it was 2-1 and they put five minutes up [time added on], Fulham never came up the pitch, they left us with the ball so it was nearly a case of just playing out time and we gave away a diabolical second goal. If we had one failing it was that we should have gone on to win 3-1. We had a couple of chances to make it 3-1 and we didn’t make those moments count and that was probably the biggest thing.”
Moyes also agrees that his players’ concentration had slipped badly: “You could use maybe mental softness that we didn’t see the job out and get the job done,” he said, “I would agree with that. The players are hurting. I can see every day that they’re hurting because the results aren’t going the way they want. They’re really good professionals in the way they go about their work and what I see in training makes me feel they’ll get results.
“I don’t know if we could have done an awful lot more, maybe defended a bit better a couple of times and taken a few more of the chances we made but we completely dominated the game and should have won the game comfortably.
“That was it. I thought we did create chances but we didn’t convert when we did get some half chances and we ended up having to chase. We started the game really well, did a lot of good things and found ourselves a goal down which shouldn’t have been the case. Nevertheless there was only one winner in the game and that was Manchester United.”
