Erik ten Hag's Manchester United excuses are missing the point

What was so disappointing about Manchester United's defeat to Fulham yesterday was the denial that followed. United were deservedly beaten by the visiting side, and yet Erik ten Hag stressed the bigger picture still looked 'very good'.

The bigger picture is that United have now lost 15 matches this season and are eight points behind Aston Villa in the race for fourth-place. The five-match winning run that rejuvenated their season was also a false dawn, given how poor the level of performance was in many of the matches.

They threw away two-goal leads against Wolves and Newport County and were fortunate to see out wins over Villa and Luton Town. Saturday's slump had been weeks in the making.

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Ten Hag refused to directly blame the injury situation in the first few months of the season, but it has become a convenient excuse whenever his side has failed to perform on the pitch.

"You see there are many good players coming up, real high-potential players, so they will be getting better and better," he said after the loss. "So definitely we are in the right direction. When we have the players in the squad available we have a good team.

"We don't have a left full-back, then Casemiro drops out - a big dropout for us - Licha Martinez, in the front. But still we have players and we have a squad to deal with it."

United were always going to suffer somewhat without Luke Shaw and Rasmus Hojlund, but that still doesn't explain why they played so poorly against a Fulham side who were themselves without star duo Joao Palhinha and Raul Jimenez.

Martinez has been a big loss all season, yet even in his absence, a centre-back