Brighton, it should be noted, celebrated their second successive win over United in the space of a few months, having crushed them 4-0 at home last May. With ten Haag for his part becoming the first Red Devils manager to lose in a league opener since Louis van Gaal in August 2014 against Swansea.

Ten Haag's new United, who threw Cristiano Ronaldo into the fray in the 52nd minute, showed great weaknesses. Bruno Fernandes and the Brazilian, Fred in the midfield cannot offer anything more, while in the attack Rashford, although he was quite improved, could not threaten the opposing goal as he would have liked. Young and highly paid international winger Jadon Sancho was out of sorts and never once managed to dribble past an opponent. The only one who stood out was the international Danish midfielder, Christian Eriksen but he was very much alone!!!

Manchester United, needs reinforcements with players of class and not talent so that one can claim that they will claim a place in the top 4 leading to the next Champions League. The management will have to spend many millions of euros and the main thing is to acquire footballers of known value and not children for the...future. Otherwise, it will be between 6th and 8th place again this year.

They demonstrated

Characteristically, Manchester United fans gathered outside Old Trafford before the match and demonstrated with banners and slogans against The Glazers.

Ten Haag, meanwhile, clearly troubled, after the disappointing performance stated:

"Brighton are a good team and they deserve to be congratulated but I look at my team and we shouldn't have conceded two such cheap goals. It's a disappointing setback. I knew from the start that I wasn't going to have an easy task"

In the second half we were better in midfield, having Eriksen low and Ronaldo high. We created and Rashford had two good chances, shame we didn't score in those phases.

United play at home to Brentford next Saturday (13/8) for the 2nd matchday and need to rebuild urgently.

Arnautovic

At the same time, it is now trying to strengthen its offensive line and is considering the case of the 33-year-old Austrian striker, Marko Arnautovic, having even submitted an offer of 8.1 million euros to Bologna to acquire him.

Arnautovic has previously played in the Premier League, with Stoke City and West Ham. In the summer of 2021 he returned to the European courts after his two-year stint in China on behalf of Shanghai.

In fact, last season he scored 15 goals in 34 matches, while if Arnautovic joins Manchester United, he will be reunited with Erik Ten Haag after 13 years, after they had worked together in Holland and Twente.