30 November 2023 , 13:23
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Peter Schmeichel took issue with Erik ten Hag following Manchester United's 3-3 draw against Galatasaray, with the Red Devils boss refusing to blame individuals for the result.
United quickly took the lead and looked set to earn a much-needed win after goals from Alejandro Garnacho, Bruno Fernandes and Scott McTominay gave them a 3-1 lead. However, that was ultimately squandered with goalkeeper Andre Onana at fault for two of Galatasaray's goals as he failed to deal with a pair of relatively straightforward free-kicks from Hakim Ziyech.
Substitute Kerem Akturkoglu then earned Galatasaray a draw late on with a well taken strike. And in a tense post-match interview for CBS Sports, United legend Schmeichel took issue with Ten Hag's claim it was "poor defending as a team" which let them down.
"I'm disappointed," Ten Hag told Schmeichel. "We did many things very good but if you are twice leading 2-0 and 3-1, you have to defend better. And it was poor defending as a team so we should have done that better."
To which Schmeichel then replied: "You say poor defending as a team? I actually have the impression the defence worked well today and defended well but it was mistakes by individuals.
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"Are you worried you don't have the right kind of players to take the team to where you want to be?" However, Ten Hag insisted United had simply "made some mistakes as a team and ... got punished for it".
He responded: "No. We are in a project and so we have to learn from this and take it from here. It's all very positive how we can play and perform and to which levels we can achieve but football is a game of mistakes and details make a difference. We made some mistakes as a team and we got punished for it."
Following his interview with Ten Hag, Schmeichel singled out Onana and Anthony Martial for criticism as he once again took issue with the Dutchman's comments. "Do you know what? I think the back four played very well today, I don't think they could have done much more," Schmeichel said.
Manchester United drew 3-3 with Galatasaray in the Champions League (AP)"Again though, you can't argue, the mistakes by the goalkeeper are very, very expensive. Every time a goalkeeper makes a mistake, it is a goal, that is just a fact of life. If you go back to Sunday, everything worked really well but when you play at this level, every little mistake you make is being penalised and you have got to learn that.
He also claimed Martial "did not do anything" when he came on for Rasmus Hojlund in the second half, adding: "When you are 2-0 up, and it is not the first time we have been 2-0 up in this tournament, you have to kill the game, you make sure the other team can't get into it, you keep the ball and try not to make mistakes.
"Of course, though, you have got to have a look at when Hojlund came off, a lot of the pressure from the very front disappeared. The guy you put in (Martial) did not do anything. You had someone (Hojlund) who worked really hard for the team up front but suddenly you don't have that pressure which gives the other team a lot of opportunities to pass the ball around.
"These are all things you have got to look at but, when you score this amount of goals, you expect to have more than one point."