The Manchester United manager revealed the reason why Cristiano Ronaldo was not part of the starting eleven in the loss to Brighton

The Manchester United took his first step in Premier League with a heavy loss to Brighton 2-1 at Old Trafford in front of his people. A match that generated many expectations due to different issues, including the arrival of the new coach Erik Ten Hag and the present of the Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo.

The first news in the previous meeting was that the Portuguese was not going to be part of the starting eleven and was going to take a place on the substitute bench. During the first half, in addition to showing what was happening on the pitch, the cameras also captured what was happening outside with the 37-year-old footballer.

Finally the former Real Madrid he entered at 53 minutes and the team improved in attack but it was not enough to reverse the result. After the final whistle, the Dutch coach explained the reason for his decision.

“Cristiano Ronaldo had ten days of training with the teamtoo little for 90 minutes, that’s the reason we didn’t start him,” said the former Ajax manager at the post-defeat press conference, adding: “This takes time. We can’t force it after a week of trainingJust over a week now.”

“He has to get his fitness back and this game helped him do that. The 35-40 minutes that he played today, plus the week (of preparation) that we will have now. Next week is going to be better”, considered Ten Hag, who at the same time recognized that with the arrival of the Portuguese, “in the second half we improved in the midfield, with Christian Eriksen further back and Ronaldo higher up”.

Regarding the loss, Ten Hag lamented: “We didn’t believe in ourselves and we made some mistakes that the rival punished us for. We made mistakes with the ball and organizational mistakes in defense. We have to take lessons and quickly learn from them. Brighton are a decent team, all compliments, but I look at my team and we shouldn’t give away two easy goals.”

The Dutch coach will have a difficult job ahead of him and he is confident that he will be able to reverse the poor sporting situation that the institution is going through: “I already knew that it was not going to be easy to build something, develop it. This takes time, I know it well and I also know that in this job you don’t have time, you have to perform. We are aware of the situation.

Finally, he spoke about the transfer market, which will close on August 31: “We could do better with the players we had in mind.” Recently, the interest of the Red Devils by midfielder azulgrana Frenkie De Jong and by the Frenchman Adrien Rabiot, today at Juventus.

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