Manchester United’s Van de Beek: ‘We lost 3-1 at home, that’s really bad’

Donny van de Beek scored off the bench for his Manchester United debut, but it didn’t mean that much coming in a troubling 3-1 home loss to Crystal Palace on Saturday.

Van de Beek came on for Paul Pogba with United down 1-0 and quickly saw his side dip two goals down on a controversial penalty.

[ RECAP: Man United 1-3 Crystal Palace ]

The former Ajax midfielder then snapped a reaction shot inside the far post to pull United within 2-1, but finished the day with not much more than the goal in 23 minutes. Van de Beek was credited with 30 touches, a tackle, and 18-of-23 passing.

“First match for the club, a day you want to win,” Van de Beek said to Manchester United TV. “It doesn’t matter how, you want to win and I’m really disappointed that we lost 3-1 at home, that’s really bad. In the week of training we did really well, we trained good so my feeling was really positive. But today we played too slowly, too long with the ball and I think against an opponent like Crystal Palace you need to speed up the game to create something. That was not good enough.”

It may take Solskjaer some time to get his best XI in order and the Red Devils were playing a Palace team with a PL match and League Cup outing under their belt. Still, the performance was poor and Van de Beek may find himself starting soon.