‘It was too late!’ – David de Gea sends warning to Manchester United attackers despite win

Manchester United goalkeeper David de Gea has encouraged his teammates to be more ruthless following their 2-0 victory over Brighton on Tuesday night – a message echoed by manager Ralf Rangnick.

The Red Devils took the lead at Old Trafford shortly after half-time through a superb strike from Cristiano Ronaldo, but the visitors had several good chances to equalise despite being reduced to 10 men when Lewis Dunk was sent off.

United – who had thrown away leads in their three previous outings – only netted their second, game-killing goal in the 97th minute through Bruno Fernandes and De Gea says the match should have been put to bed long before that.

Speaking to MUTV afterwards, the Spanish shot-stoper 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 prior to Fernandes’ strike, De Gea continued: ‘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.

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‘So it was too late the goal, but at least we scored the second goal.’

He added: ‘Like I say, we should