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Manchester United will begin the 2024/25 season entering something a new era.
New minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe was able to complete his boardroom shake-up this summer, with Omar Berrada, Dan Ashworth and Jason Wilcox all in place as the Ineos regime takes shape.
While this behind-the-scenes work continues, there have no big swings in the transfer market yet and manager Erik ten Hag remains in place, so the team that took to the pitch for the club’s first pre-season friendly on Monday night was a familiar one.
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The Red Devils opted to begin their summer programme of friendlies in Norway for a clash against Rosenborg at the Lerkendal Stadium, suffering a 1-0 defeat that Ten Hag labelled ‘by far not good enough’.
The English side, which featured the likes of Marcus Rashford, Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Jonny Evans, Mason Mount and Casemiro in their starting line-up, were dominated by the hosts and would eventually go down 1-0 after a stoppage time strike from Noah Holm.
The score only tells half of the story however, as one of Manchester United’s key failings from last season was again on display.
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Ten Hag’s men conceded 58 times in the Premier League last season on their way to registering a negative goal difference for the first time in the competition, and we 19th in the league for shots conceded on their own goal.
Fixing the defence and making sure that woeful statistic will be one of Ten Hag’s main jobs this summer, but he could barely have gotten off to a worse start, as his side conceded 22 shots on goal and the post four times.
The team conceded 20 or more shots on goal in 15 games last term in the Premier League, again underlining how much of an issue this has been for the team.
Ten Hag spoke after the match to demand an improvement from his players when they take on Rangers at Murrayfield on Saturday, which comes before their pre-season tour to the United States.
“The result is not secondary,” the manager told MUTV. “Of course, we play pre-season, but at Man United the standard is you win games and definitely don’t lose games. So if you can’t win, don’t lose the game, like we did in the last second of the game, but of course, the performance is more important and the performance was below standards.”
We can talk [about] everything that is bad, but I am not that guy. I have seen and this is not the standard for top football. Top football, you have to achieve much higher standards, starts with any individual, make sure you are fit.
“I know we can’t be match-fit in this moment, I know you need these games. The opponent is [playing already] in the league, so they have a much higher fitness level –but we are Man United and should perform better.”
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