Erik Ten Hag criticizes Manchester United players for failing to find second goal against Crystal Palace

Erik Ten Hag has crit­i­cized Man­ches­ter Unit­ed for miss­ing two points against Crys­tal Palace after fail­ing to score a deci­sive sec­ond goal.

Bruno Fer­nan­des scored the right goal just before half-time to give the Red Dev­ils their tenth win in a row.

How­ev­er, a free-kick by Michael Orise in the 91st minute pre­vent­ed the victory.

To make mat­ters worse, Casemiro received a yel­low card for a reck­less tack­le on Wil­fried Zaha and the Brazil­ian mid­field­er is sus­pend­ed for Sun­day’s trip to the Emirates.

“We lost two points,” Ten Hag com­plained. When you’re lead­ing with two min­utes left?

“We have to invest more to get the sec­ond goal and not be in a sit­u­a­tion where we lose two points in a lucky moment.

“We were lead­ing 1–0. In the sec­ond half we had space to kill them and go for the sec­ond goal. I did­n’t think we would real­ly go for it.

“Why” is hard to say. You have to crit­i­cize your own team. Aim for No. 2″

Scott McTom­i­nay was knocked out by Chris Richards and was denied a penal­ty, but Ten Hag avoid­ed crit­i­ciz­ing ref­er­ee Robert Jones or VAR for not award­ing the penalty.

Casemiro will miss what could be this week­end’s game of the season.

How­ev­er, Ten Hag not­ed the vic­to­ry achieved with­out the Brazil­ian, Arse­nal’s only league defeat, when they beat Arse­nal 3–1 at Old Traf­ford in September.

“He’s a very impor­tant play­er for us and one of the rea­sons why we’re here,” Ten Hag added. But last time we beat Arse­nal with­out Casemiro. Also, I have to do something.

Palace might have gone ahead in the sec­ond half when Wil­fried Zaha ran into the box, but his for­mer team-mate Aaron Wan-Bis­sa­ka stopped him at the final whistle.

Zaha said, “It had to be him!” As he was run­ning, he turned around and it was Aaron. He’s the only one who can tack­le from behind.”

“If [Wan-Bis­sa­ka] was a dif­fer­ent play­er, he would­n’t have been caught,” said Patrick Vieira.

“It was a tough game against a good team. I need­ed luck to stay in the game and I let that luck happen.”

“It was a great free-kick,” added the Palace boss of Orize’s mag­i­cal moment. If you talk to me about free kicks, I look the oth­er way.

Improv­ing tac­ti­cal play in “pos­ses­sion”. It’s very impor­tant to me.

Fer­nan­dez was frus­trat­ed, but urged Unit­ed to turn the page imme­di­ate­ly with Arse­nal ahead of them.