Ole Gunnar Solskjaer insists the 3-1 defeat to Crystal Palace on Saturday evening does not mean Manchester United need to sign players, as he delights in the debut of Donny van de Beek.
It was a really poor performance from the Red Devils, in their opening Premier League match of the season, as they were roundly outplayed by the visitors and comfortably beaten.
Van de Beek came off the bench to score on his debut, but it was not enough for the home side to get anything out of the game.
United legend Gary Neville slammed Victor Lindelof for his display and called for a new centre-back to be signed, but Solskjaer insists that his current crop of players simply need to play better rather than rely on reinforcements.
However, the Norwegian is always open to quality signings, if they are available.
‘Well, we can play so much better than today,’ said the United boss. ‘If you look at the players we had on the pitch, and on the bench, and not here today, I think we all need to look within first. We need to look at ourselves and know that we have to perform better.
‘Then again, we’re always – always – looking to improve if there’s something out there that’s available to the right price. We always want to strengthen. But I think we can all look at ourselves in the mirror today instead.’
Van de Beek was possibly the only positive for Solskjaer to take from the game, as he came off the bench with 23 minutes to go and kept his side in it with a well-taken goal.
His new manager was impressed and expects to see plenty more goals from him in the coming months and years.
‘Yeah he gave us a bit of belief there that we could get something from the game,’ said the manager. ‘Donny is bright, he sees space, he sees the ball, where it’s going to land in the box – and that’s what he’s going to give us. That’s why we’ve signed him.
‘He’s got that knack of finding the right areas in the box. We needed that because some time, not very often, we got round, put some crosses in, and we didn’t have enough players in the box in the right areas.’
The 23-year-old new arrival was left disappointed with how he made his debut for the club, openly stating that his teammates’ performances were not good enough.
‘That was not good enough today,’ Van de Beek told MUTV. ‘Last week in training, it looked really good. There was lots of quality and we played fast but today we played too slowly.
‘First match for the club, a day you want to win. It doesn’t matter how, you want to win and I’m really disappointed that we lost 3-1 at home, that’s really bad.
‘I think against an opponent like Crystal Palace you need to speed up the game to create something. That was not good enough.’
