Manchester United have had a shaky start to the season but things did at least improve at the weekend with a solid win over Burnley.
Things will always create headlines at Old Trafford when they are going wrong and the loss to Spurs certainly did that.
They responded well against the Clarets, though, and saw out a 2-0 victory.
Chris Smalling perhaps unsurprisingly, though, has admitted that he and his side need to defend better.
As quoted by MUTV he said:
‘Last season we picked up a lot of clean sheets and this year we’ve conceded early goals,’ Smalling told MUTV.
‘We need to get back what we’ve done in the last few seasons when we’ve conceded very few goals, like on Sunday.
‘It was down to us players to stand up tall and get a result, and we’re very happy with the win.
‘With us not having a game in the week, we’d been able to work on a lot of patterns of play and you could see them coming out and finishing with the goals, so we were happy with that.’
You can hardly disagree with Smalling because, at times, their defending has been pretty shoddy to say the least.
They were made to look like chumps against Spurs and that will have hurt their professional pride so getting a clean sheet last time out will be more than welcome.
Now it’s up to them to keep that going as United look to challenge City, Spurs Liverpool and Chelsea.
