December 26th 2023.
Erik ten Hag had his work cut out for him when Manchester United were down 2-0 to Aston Villa on Boxing Day. But, he found the words to inspire his team and the result was a 3-2 comeback victory.
Ten Hag spoke to Amazon Prime afterwards and revealed what he said to the team at half time. He said, “The atmosphere changed a lot from the first half to the second, but if you look at the first half you are losing because of two set plays, in moments where we were not so focused. I think already in the first half we played quite well, and kept trying and trying. At half-time I said to the team, ‘Keep believing, and keep doing what we did, actually do even more’ – we needed to put more and more pressure on. At 2-1 then when we added pressure you see what happened.”
Ten Hag had previously been under significant pressure and Tim Sherwood had even called for him to be sacked. However, Ten Hag wasn't concerned as he said, “I said before the game that we were competitive with Arsenal, competitive with Liverpool so if we play our best we can beat anyone. Believe that, even when you are two-nil down, it doesn’t matter. Keep going, show character, and today they did show we have the personality to do it. I think it was a very good team performance.”
Alejandro Garnacho scored twice in the second half to help United to the win. Ten Hag must be delighted to have completed such a dramatic comeback and to have silenced his critics.
[This article has been trending online recently and has been generated with AI. Your feed is customized.]
[Generative AI is experimental.]
