Interim manager Ralf Rangnick admitted that Manchester United need to improve the collective level if they want to earn points against Liverpool and Arsenal.
The German manager said United cannot afford to rely solely on Cristiano Ronaldo despite his match-winning hat-trick against Norwich City on Saturday.
“It was the second time now [that Ronaldo hit a match-winning treble] like against Spurs with the same result, 3-2 like today. But we should not only rely on him.” Ragnick said.
“In general, offensively at times we played pretty well at times today, although in the first half sometimes we slowed the game down and didn’t make use of the overlap situations on the wings, so even there we could have made more out of it.
“In general, in possession today was okay, a pretty good game, but defensively I was not happy at all.” Ragnick added.
Against the visitor who is at the bottom of the table, United had confidently and led two goals after more than half an hour thanks to a brace from Ronaldo.
He opened the scoring with a cushion in the 7th minute and then headed home to double the difference after 32 minutes. However, things were no longer easy for the hosts, even allowing Kieran Dowell and Teemu Pukki to score the equaliser draw for Norwich.
It was thanks to Ronaldo’s direct free kick in the 76th minute that Man Utd could win all three points.
The Portuguese captain continues to be the person who contributes the most goals for Man Utd this season (21 goals) – 12 goals more than second placed Bruno Fernandes.
The Red Devils still revealed many problems in the game, especially in defense. Currently, they have a total of 44 goals since the beginning of the 2021-2022 Premier League season , the worst performance among the top eight teams.
