Manchester United shot-stopper David de Gea has encouraged his teammates to be more ruthless after their 2-0 win over Brighton on Tuesday – a message echoed by manager Ralf Rangnick.
The Red Devils took the lead shortly after half-time through a superb strike from Cristiano Ronaldo, but the visitors had several good opportunities to equalise despite being reduced to 10 men when Lewis Dunk was sent off.
United – who had thrown away leads in their three previous games – only netted their second, goal in the 97th minute through Bruno Fernandes, and De Gea says the game should have been put to bed long before that.
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Speaking to MUTV afterwards, the Spanish keeper said: ‘Well to be honest, I think we had the control of the game in the second half. First half wasn’t the best, they had a couple of good chances.
‘But then we reacted very well in the second half, we scored a goal, we get the red card for them.
‘Even like this, we give a couple of chances at the end so we should kill the game before but at the moment the three points are the most important thing so we are happy with the three points.’
Asked if he was feeling tense in the final stages before Fernandes’ strike, De Gea added: ‘Yeah, I was there saying, “Come on, we have to kill the game” because in the Premier League you never know, even with 10 players they can score.
‘So it was too late the goal, but at least we scored the second goal.’
He added: ‘Like I say, we should have scored much earlier, we had a couple of good chances and then you suffer when you don’t score the goal and you don’t kill the game.
‘You suffer, because they are a good team, they know how to play, but this is football, we win the game and we are happy.’
Rangnick viewed the game very similarly to De Gea, saying: ‘Obviously we should have killed the game off again much earlier after the red card, we had five or six unbelievable chances to score – but again we didn’t.
‘And as long as it’s 1-0, with the experience of the last three games, it’s normal that there is a little bit of insecurity in the team.’
Asked if he was nervous, the German coach added: ‘Yes. I mean of course, with the memory of the last three games – again, that’s normal. It’s a little bit like history repeats itself and of course you are a little bit nervous then in the last five minutes. That would have been the worst-case scenario if they had scored with one player down.’
