Stupid Decision to Keep Crossing to Ronaldo—Ten Hag fires

Talk about the Manchester United manager, Erik ten Hag fueling the narratives of a feud with the Cristiano Ronaldo fan base, then you it doesn’t go beyond the Dutchman’s criticisms of his players crossing the ball to Ronaldo every time they had it against Aston Villa.

Manchester United were big losers on Super Sunday against a newly rejuvenated Aston Villa side that had Unai Emery managing his very first premier league game since leaving Arsenal.

And like the poets might say, it brought him face to face with his Europa League nemesis, Manchester United, whom the current crop of Red Devils’ players would recognize as the manager who knocked them out of the finals during Ole Gunnar Solksjaer’s stint as Man United boss.

The Sunday fixture proved that Unai Emery may just about become an all too familiar and yet formidable foe in the future for an Erik ten Hag side after defeating them on a 3-1 score line.

In his post-match press conference and interview, Erik ten Hag, the manager of Manchester United, referred to his team’s strategy of deep-crossing for Cristiano Ronaldo as “stupid.”

Ten Hag responded when asked if he had persuaded his players to search for Ronaldo’s head saying:

“No, I think it was stupid to do that.”

“We delivered too quickly crosses in from too far and too forcing. Then, we don’t help him. We have to bring in the crosses at the right moment.

“I think in the second half also we bring too quickly the crosses in. The right moment was from Christian Eriksen in the first half and he found the moment in the pocket to deliver the ball to Cristiano at the far post. That was the right moment.”

A 3-1 defeat in the very game Cristiano Ronaldo played full on 90 minutes for Manchester United while captaining the side will add more dent to the narratives of a poor season for the 5 time Ballon d’or winner.

In the Carabao Cup, United will play Villa once again before playing Fulham the following weekend.