'The rest was rubbish' - Erik ten Hag claims only two things were good in Manchester United's first half performance

Erik ten Hag labelled Manchester United's first-half performance against Leicester as "rubbish".

United were fortunate to lead 1-0 at half-time through Marcus Rashford's clinical 25th-minute strike after Harvey Barnes and Kelechi Iheanacho were brilliantly denied by David de Gea with the game goalless.

Rashford was played onside by Leicester centre-back Harry Souttar from Bruno Fernandes's perceptive pass and Ten Hag claimed only those two pieces of play were exempt from criticism.

Also read: What Ten Hag told fans at full-time

"I was really unhappy by our performance," Ten Hag said of the first half. " We have to follow the rules and principles from our way of playing. When you don’t, it becomes a mess and when you face a good opponent like Leicester, you concede chances.

"And it was only down to David de Gea that we don't concede a goal. So we were really lucky at half-time that we were 1-0 up. Of course, a great pass by Bruno, a great finish by Rashy. But for the rest was rubbish."

United emerged for the second-half unrecognsiable from the first and were 3-0 up within 16 minutes of the restart through a second Rashford goal and substitute Jadon Sancho.

Ten Hag stressed the United players were unhappy with their efforts at half-time and admitted that the integration of Marcel Sabitzer, signed on loan from Bayern Munich less than three weeks ago, had impacted United's balance with Casemiro suspended for three Premier League games.

"They (the players) knew. I could see about their behaviour at half-time. They were not happy, as well," Ten Hag added. "I could see they were disappointed by their performance. We could do so much better and they knew it.

"But they are not robots, that's first, and we have to bring in a