Ten Hag praises impact of Man United subs and will continue to 'give players trust'

Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag praised his substitutes after Marcus Rashford scored two and set up fellow introduction Anthony Martial as Manchester United escaped a scare at Omonia Nicosia in the Europa League.

Wounded by Sunday’s 6-3 derby defeat at Manchester City, the Red Devils were stung in Cyprus after making a strong start as the hosts capitalised on lax defending to go ahead through Karim Ansarifard.

Omonia scored after Tyrell Malacia was dispossessed having collected a pass from ineffective Jadon Sancho following a clear free-kick, with Ten Hag replacing them with Luke Shaw and Rashford at half time.

The latter would go on to score either side of a fine goal by second-half substitute Martial, putting the Group E encounter out of reach despite Omonia replacement Nikolas Panayiotou making it 3-2 late on.

Speaking to The National after the game, Ten Hag said he was happy with how his players responded to falling behind and praised the impact of his substitutes.

"Football is a game of mistakes," the Dutchman said. "The first 30 or 35 minutes we played quite well, the only thing we didn't do was score a goal. When you score a goal you make your life easy, we didn't, then we concede a goal and it was the worst 10 minutes from the game from us. After half time, we dealt well with the setback."

On taking off Malacia and Sancho, Ten Hag added: "It was not what I was happy with, he movement with our ball, the width on the left side, for me was no good first-half. The movement from behind the defending line, so I hoped with Luke and Marcus we get more effect from that and so in my opinion that is what happened."

The victory provided an important three points in United’s quest to reach the Europa League knockout