‘Lower-class’ teams will define Manchester United’s Premier League season, says Erik ten Hag

Ten Hag believes United proved themselves against the Premier League’s best last year but that is not his current focus

Erik ten Hag will lead Manchester United again this season (The FA via Getty Images)

Erik ten Hag believes Manchester United have to improve against the “lower-class” teams if they are to challenge, after proving they can beat the best.

United face Manchester City in the Community Shield having defeated the Premier League champions in the FA Cup final while Ten Hag also cited his record against Liverpool as evidence of their ability to trouble elite sides.

But United finished 31 points behind City last season as they were beaten by Brighton, Crystal Palace, Bournemouth, West Ham, Nottingham Forest and Fulham, who ended up between ninth and 17th, and drew at home to relegated Burnley.

And Ten Hag said: “We beat Liverpool, we beat Man City but our challenge is to bring consistency and, I say with all respect, against lower-class teams: to win the points and I think other teams are ahead of us in that prospect. There we have to catch up.”

United’s first two matches are against Fulham and Brighton, two teams who defeated them last year, and the Dutchman feels another challenge for his team is to negotiate the first few weeks of the season without dropping points when he feels they cannot yet be at their best.

One of his summer signings, Leny Yoro, is injured and the other, Joshua Zirkzee, has only recently linked up with his teammates for the first time while Ten Hag has been without a host of players for pre-season after their international commitments over the summer.

Man United’s new signing Leny Yoro is already injured (Andrew Milligan/PA Wire)

The United manager feels his side may not be at 100 per cent yet. “I can see this because we didn’t have time together,” he explained. “We have to work on our game model to find the patterns. It was a break, they all played Euros, Copa America so they were in different teams, with different game models and different patterns. Now we have to bring this together. It is complicated.

“I am not the only one who has to deal with this problem but there are also teams with less international players, they can make a proper pre-season so they are probably ahead of us. We have to deal with this in the coming weeks without dropping points.”

Ten Hag called for patience with the £42m forward Zirkzee, rather than expecting too much, too soon from the arrival from Bologna.

“For every player coming into a new league, it costs time,” he said. “For every player coming into the Premier League, we all know the intensity is higher in comparison with the leagues you are coming from. But already he has experience, he was a player in Belgium, Germany and Italy so he has already collected a lot of good experiences and that will help him.

“We have to help him make the step. You see it is not like early days when you have a proper pre-season with the team. It is not. He went to the Euros so he had to train on his own here. He and we need time to fit him in. That will take some weeks.”