Harry Maguire says Manchester United’s players ‘owe’ Ole Gunnar Solskjaer following the club’s ’embarrassing defeat’ to Liverpool last weekend.
United were beaten 5-0 at home to their fierce rivals on Sunday to pile the pressure on Solskjaer, the Red Devils’ heaviest ever home defeat to the Liverpool and the first time the club have conceded five without scoring at Old Trafford since 1955.
Solskjaer’s position has come under threat after four games without a win in the Premier League and Maguire has insisted it is the players who must take responsibility ahead of this weekend’s trip to face Tottenham.
“It’s been tough, it’s been disappointing,” Maguire told Sky Sports. “When you look back at the result and the performance it was embarrassing. Nowhere near good enough for this club.
“It’s been a tough week. I’m not going to say we’ve moved on easily.
“It’s one of the lowest I’m sure all the players have felt in their career. You go home and you don’t sleep much, you’ve got thoughts running through your head. ‘If only I did this or this’. If I’m being honest I went home and I just looked at myself and what I can do better and take full responsibility on my shoulders.
“I hope every player in the dressing room is looking at themselves, taking full responsibility on their shoulders and not pointing the finger and blaming anyone else. You look at yourself first and foremost when you have a result like this and a period like this.
“We let the manager down against Liverpool. We let the fans down, the club down, us as players. So we have to take huge responsibility for that.
“Do we owe him a performance? Of course we do.”
No side in the top half has conceded more than the Red Devils’ 15 goals so far this season, whilst the club have kept just one clean sheet in their past 21 fixtures across all competitions.
Maguire admits his side have not been good enough defensively and says he shoulders ‘a big responsibility’ for their recent struggles.
“We’ve conceded far too many goals. I take a big responsibility for that,” he said. “I take responsibility for my own performance but also the defensive performance as well.
“I’m the captain, I’ve been a mainstay in the defence for over two years. We’ve had some good runs but at the minute we’re not defending well enough. My performances haven’t been good enough and I’m looking to get back to the form I’ve shown prior to the injury in the last two seasons.
“From the start of the season we’ve conceded too many chances and we’ve been punished this week with the chances in the first half. We gave them chances and they punished us. You can’t do it against these good teams and you can’t always get away with it.
“If I could tell you why, we’d do something about it. We’re working on it, we’re analysing it. For sure, this week has been nowhere near good enough.
“We don’t generally look at stats. I didn’t know those stats [for tackles and duels won]. That’s something I’m sure the staff are looking at but we look at the performances and results. This past week we know we’ve conceded far too many goals and far too many chances. We know we have got to improve.”
Maguire says his side’s focus is to move on from the Liverpool loss and focus on this weekend’s clash with Spurs, urging the squad to ‘stick together’ as the club bid to navigate a difficult period.
“We’ve tried to move on as quickly as we can to try to prepare for another big game on the Saturday,” he said.
“Obviously no game in the midweek has made it more difficult, more time to analyse. But it’s probably what we needed as a group of players to speak and analyse where we’re going wrong and what we can do better.
“It’s not the first time I’ve been in this situation. It’s not the first time these lads have. We’ve now got to stick together as a group, try to move forward from the result and put on a positive performance on Saturday.
“We’ve got big players at this club, big experience, big international players and now we’ve got to show that.
“The spirit in the group is really good and we stick together and we can move forward.
“We’ve got a big game on Saturday and we need to look after the performance and make sure we give the fans something to be proud of because we know we’ve let them down this week, for sure.”
