Donny van de Beek insists Manchester United are determined to ‘come back stronger’ after their ‘painful’ defeat to Tottenham in the Premier League.
Tottenham inflicted an embarrassing defeat on Manchester United and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer on Sunday, leaving Old Trafford with a 6-1 victory.
The shocking result was Manchester United’s heaviest defeat since Solskjaer took over in December 2018 and the largest the club have suffered since Ed Woodward took over as executive vice-chairman seven years ago.
United took the lead after just two minutes thanks to Bruno Fernandes’ penalty, but Spurs equalised through Tanguy Ndombele and Son Heung-min then gave the visitors the lead.
Anthony Martial was sent off in controversial circumstances midway through the first half, before Harry Kane and Son both scored again to give Tottenham a 4-1 lead at half-time.
Serge Aurier and Kane added Spurs’ fifth and sixth goals after the break to complete a remarkable victory for Jose Mourinho’s side.
Van de Beek – who joined Manchester United from Ajax last month – was a second-half substitute during the match and admitted it was a ‘painful’ experience for him and his team-mates.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web
browser that
supports HTML5
video
‘Painful loss for us yesterday,’ the £40m Netherlands international wrote on Instagram. ‘We will learn from it, and work hard to come back stronger.’
Solskjaer admitted it was an ’embarrassing’ defeat for his Manchester United team and took full responsibility for the loss.
He said: ‘It’s very embarrassing, it hurt all the players. It hurts me as the manager. It’s my worst day ever.
‘I’ll hold my hands up, I’m responsible for this. I’ve lost 5-0 with United and we’ve lost 6-1. We’ve lost big results before and always bounced back.
‘I promise we’ll do everything we can to turn this around.
‘We know how good they can be but today all our mistakes came almost like Christmas everything at once and if you make too many mistakes against a good team and you’ll be punished.’