Shaw blasts ‘embarrassing’ Man Utd after Liverpool defeat

Suraj Radia

• 6 Mar 2023 22:00 GMT
• 2 min read

Luke Shaw has admitted Manchester United’s stars have suffered from complacency since winning the Carabao Cup, culminating in the humiliating 7-0 loss to rivals Liverpool.

United defeated Newcastle at Wembley last weekend before an unconvincing 3-1 win in the FA Cup against West Ham and had been on a run of just two losses in their last 33 games before the horror show at Anfield.

Shaw, who was at fault for two of Liverpool’s goals in the defeat, described the performance as ‘embarrassing’ and ‘disgraceful’ but insisted the team are still in ‘a really good place’.

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“Our standards have clearly dropped since we’ve won that trophy and in the last couple of games we haven’t been our normal selves,” said Shaw. “We showed no personality, no mentality and for a big team to come here we need to be better.

“It showed in the first half that if you switch off for one moment then you get punished. In the second half we switched off for the whole half and not just moments.

“It was embarrassing, disgraceful and it’s not acceptable what that second half was. We can’t let this one result derail our whole season because we’re in a really good place. It’s another hurdle we need to go over and as a team we’ll climb over that.”

Ten Hag pushing for reaction

United’s players reported to training at 9am on Monday for a breakdown of Sunday’s events, with Erik ten Hag having already been in the building for a number of hours by then.

The Telegraph report that Ten Hag made no secret of his unhappiness with the squad’s lack of professionalism and indiscipline, however the onus was very much on moving on and providing an instant response against Real Betis on Thursday in Europe.

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“On the pitch I felt embarrassed for us players, for the fans that were there supporting us, that were watching at home, to watch that second half,” Shaw continued.

“I can only apologise for that and us as players have to own it, we have to stand up and accept that it was nowhere near good enough. It was completely unacceptable and I’m sure they’re hurting, but us as players are hurting a lot.”