Saints boss Ralph Hasenhuttl admits losing 9-0 to Manchester United “hurts even more” than defeat by the same scoreline last season. Having gone down to 10 men inside the opening two minutes following a red card for Alex Jankewitz, Saints shipped six goals at Old Trafford before Jan Bednarek was too sent off. United then turned the screw, chasing a Premier League record winning margin and they netted three times in the final five minutes. Their 9-0 success matches that achieved by Leicester City against Saints in October 2019, as well as United’s 9-0 mauling of Ipswich Town in 1995 with those three games the joint largest winning margin ever seen in a Premier League game.
Ralph Hasenhuttl said: “We lost again in a horrible way, Again it was the same story, one man down, this time it was after two minutes and then 90 minutes can be long in the Premier League. We couldn’t help the guys from outside, we had no alternatives, no players on the bench, no alternatives in the defence to defend better. In the end, it’s a little bit of a different situation to the first time because we played a good season so far and we are in a position in the table where we haven’t been for a long time and nothing seemed that we would have such an evening here, but you see how it can go in the Premier League.”
Saints were without nine first-team players due to injury for the trip to Old Trafford, with academy talents Jankewitz and Kayne Ramsay making their first starts of the season. Quizzed on if the experience of responding to the previous 9-0 will help the side this time around,
Ralph Hasenhuttl added: “I don’t need this result to know what we have to do better. This time it is a completely different situation, not that it hurts less, it hurts even more when you get this result again. The team is a different one now and that is the reason why we’ve played a good season so far. Let’s see how the season ends. It will end better than the last I think.”
And the Saints boss admits he did have flashbacks of the heavy defeat to the Foxes during the closing stages at Old Trafford
Ralph Hasenhuttl: “Sure you have it in your mind. I cannot deny that I also didn’t have it in my mind. Then you concede in overtime another goal, like the last time. It was like a rollercoaster again.”
Asked if he feels humiliated to be part of two of the heaviest defeats in Premier League history,
Ralph Hasenhuttl said: “It is not acceptable, you are right. The goals, especially the last five goals, were a bit too easy how we conceded them. We were not only one (man) down, we were also two down. I know that tomorrow nobody will speak about that, just like nobody speaks about the sending off in the first 9-0. We can still discuss how easy we conceded the goals. We played against one of the best teams in the league and we have had fantastic results here in the past and this time it was a horrible result for us. That doesn’t change my opinion about the season we’ve had so far to be honest. It’s the same team that won against Liverpool one month ago. The only difference now is we have nine injured players.”
