United are a mess from top to bottom, says McTominay
SCOTT McTOMINAY admitted Manchester United are in disarray from top to bottom after their season hit a new low at Arsenal that prompted caretaker manager Ralf Rangnick to admit their top-four hopes are over.
Scotland midfielder McTominay gave a startling insight into the scale of United’s issues as he underlined the mammoth size of the task facing incoming boss Erik Ten Hag to revive the club following their error-strewn 3-1 defeat at The Emirates yesterday. It was also one which backed up a conversation club legend Paul Scholes revealed he had with Jesse Lingard in which the midfielder allegedly described the United dressing room as ‘a disaster’.
McTominay said: ‘There’s a whole load of problems in terms of players, staff, everything higher up. There are a lot of things going on at the minute.
‘For us, self-belief, lack of confidence — you can see it all in the last two months.
‘When we get back in the dressing room it’s go home and take a look at yourself in the mirror.
‘You can’t go back to your house and be satisfied with conceding three goals away at Arsenal when we deserved to win the match.
‘The last four games are
about pride for us, going out on the pitch and showing a bit of balls with your performances. When the new coach comes in, we need to be ready for everything, to be so concentrated on our jobs that we impress him.
‘It’s difficult for me to speak right now because there are so many emotions. It comes down to the basics and we never do them well enough in big games recently.’
Former United midfielder Scholes said on DAZN: ‘It’s an absolute mess, a disaster of a dressing room. I had a chat with Jesse the other day and I’m sure he won’t mind me saying he said the dressing room is just a disaster.’
When Scholes’s revelation was put to Rangnick following their fifth defeat in eight, he said: ‘Obviously after games like today, or after Liverpool or Everton, there is huge disappointment in the locker room, for sure, this is normal.
‘It would be a problem if this was different. For me, this is normal but I think the whole group get on reasonable with each other, I’m not daring to say they get on well with each other. But I don’t see there is an issue in regard to the locker room.’
Rangnick, though, did concede United’s morale was on the floor after being left with little to play for. They are now six points off fourthplaced Arsenal having played a game more.
‘You look at the table, Spurs and Arsenal, it’s not very realistic to dream and talk about top four,’ he added. ‘It’s a question again of pride, a question of honour, we owe that to the fans. We have two home games against Chelsea and Brentford.
‘The defeat to Atletico destroyed a lot of hopes and also the emotions of some of the players, which I can understand.
‘That moment caused a negative reaction in the group and the draw against Leicester and defeat at Everton had some effect.’
United’s defending, once again, was poor before all three Arsenal goals but Diogo Dalot hit the woodwork twice and they had a number of other opportunities to score more than the one goal they did from Cristiano Ronaldo, his 100th Premier League strike.
Rangnick also claimed a host of VAR decisions went against them. He said: ‘We were unlucky with three or four questionable VAR decisions after seeing video footage in the locker room.
‘The second goal of Cristiano’s was not offside and Arsenal’s third goal was clearly offside.’