Liverpool came, saw and humiliated United
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer vowed not to quit as Manchester United manager despite suffering his ‘‘darkest day’’ in football after total humiliation at the hands of Liverpool.
A hat-trick from Mohamed Salah and goals from Naby Keita and Diogo Jota earned Liverpool an extraordinary 5-0 win at Old Trafford and condemned United to their worst home defeat to their great rivals and biggest since a 7-1 humbling 126 years ago.
The capitulation piled the pressure on Solskjaer, who admitted he had never felt lower and that United had hit ‘‘rock bottom’’.
United were booed off at halftime, when Solskjaer is understood to have ripped into his players, and at fulltime and Liverpool fans taunted Solskjaer mercilessly with chants of ‘‘Ole must stay’’ and ‘‘Ole’s at the wheel’’.
But Solskjaer said he had been given no indication by the Old Trafford hierarchy that the defeat would cost him his job and insisted he would not walk away, despite conceding his side had ‘‘hit a brick wall’’ in recent weeks after taking just one point from 12 in the Premier League.
United’s misery was compounded when Paul Pogba was sent off for a studs-up lunge on Keita in the second half.
‘‘I have come too far, we have come too far as a group,’’ the United manager said. ‘‘We are too close to give up now. We know we are at rock bottom. We can’t feel any worse than this. Let’s see where we take it. It’s not easy to say something apart from it is the darkest day I have had leading these players.’’
Asked if he still had the club’s backing, Solskjaer added: ‘‘Well, I’ve heard nothing else and I’m still thinking about tomorrow’s work. I can’t say now I’ve felt any worse than this. It’s the worse I’ve been, the lowest I’ve been but I accept the responsibility. That is mine today and it’s mine going forward.
‘‘The only way I know how to approach life is to wake up tomorrow morning, look forward, evaluate what’s gone on, evaluate my very best and come through a difficult time.
‘‘The feeling we’ve had that we are getting to where we want to be, in the last few weeks we’ve hit a brick wall, the performances haven’t come and we’ve conceded too many easy goals.
‘‘I do believe in myself. I do believe that I am getting close to what I want with the club, what we’ve done, what I’ve seen, the development. But the results lately haven’t been good enough.’’
Harry Maguire, who endured a woeful game, issued an apology to the fans on behalf of the players. ‘‘We apologise to the fans, it was nowhere near good enough for this club,’’ the United captain said.
‘‘They stuck with us right to the end and we appreciate that but as a club we have to do better. I am so disappointed. To concede four in the first half, especially at Old Trafford, is nowhere near good enough.
‘‘As a player I know myself. I’ll be looking at myself and my individual performance. We have to stick together, there is no point blaming each other.’’
Solskjaer was given the full backing of United’s decision makers after last weekend’s 4-2 defeat at Leicester. But the United manager admitted he was not sure how the players will react going forward with Tottenham to play in London on Sunday before facing Atalanta in the Champions League in Italy three days later.
United have conceded 11 goals in their past three games and have kept one clean sheet in their past 21 matches. Their run of 13 consecutive games at Old Trafford without a clean sheet is their worst record since 1964.
‘‘I am sad, disappointed, angry of
course,’’ he said. ‘‘My emotion doesn’t matter apart from what we do to improve and make sure it doesn’t happen. This could go either way, we could sulk or we could come together.
‘‘Next is Tottenham away, then it’s a Champions game against Atalanta. We have to sort our frame of mind out.’’
Asked who shouldered the responsibility, Solskjaer said: ‘‘It is mine, that is it. The coaching staff are very, very good, brilliant. I choose the way we approach the game, we were not clinical enough and gave too much space and when you give good players space they score.
‘‘You can look at last season when we lost to Spurs 6-1 - this is worse, miles worse. This is miles worse for me as a Manchester lad.
I’ve just got to say we have to get over this as quickly as we can.’’
Jurgen Klopp, the Liverpool manager, admitted the win was ‘‘special’’ but expressed some sympathy for Solskjaer.
‘‘The last thing I want to be is in his shoes in this moment,’’ he said. ‘‘When you lose a derby, which happened to me once or twice, you don’t want to go out there and give interviews and for sure it is not nice.’’
Liverpool lost James Milner to a hamstring injury and Keita was taken off on a stretcher after Pogba’s challenge and will be assessed.
Klopp also wondered if Cristiano Ronaldo was fortunate to escape a red card for lashing out at Curtis Jones.
‘‘I saw it of course and it looked like a red card but I got told he hits
the ball or didn’t hear the whistle,’’ Klopp said. ‘‘I don’t want Cristiano getting a red card. For me it looked like [one] but I got told it was not and that’s fine.’’
In other matches yesterday, Leicester continued their revival with goals from Youri Tielemans and James Maddison giving them a 2-1 win at Brentford, while Michail Antonio took advantage of Harry Kane’s defensive inadequacies to lead West Ham to a 1-0 home win against Tottenham.
Antonio got the better of his marker, Kane, at a corner in the 72nd minute and poked home his seventh goal of the season in all competitions. The win moves David Moyes’ side above Tottenham in the Premier League to fourth place.
‘‘We know we are at rock bottom. We can’t feel any worse than this. Let’s see where we take it. It’s not easy to say something apart from it is the darkest day I have had leading these players.’’
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer
Manchester United manager after the 5-0 loss to Liverpool at Old Trafford.