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Manchester United won against Bournemouth yesterday, and they will need 1 point in the next two games to secure the Champions League next season. Erik ten Hag praised his team, and they were especially impressive at the beginning of the match when they pressed hard, which resulted in a great goal by Casemiro.
"Very happy, I think the first 25 minutes was a very good performance from our team, maybe one of the highest levels of the season," Ten Hag said, as quoted by manchestereveningnews.co.uk One of the most important things for the Dutch expert is a clean sheet.
Defensively, they played one of the best games. The opposing team could not do much. "It's the way we want to play football. Pin the opponent back, good on the ball, a lot of movements, good counter-press, good press, against a good team and they can play really good structures - I like them, the way of play.
You can see they are safe two games from the end and they didn't have any chance to play out because we dominated them totally and also we created chances and scored a brilliant goal. A clean sheet is always very important to be successful in a season, it tells something about our structure, our plan and telling also something about dedication from the team, the belief they have in this plan and how they execute it.
We have some individual great players in the pressing, in the defending, in the end we also have a very good goalkeeper who saves one-on-ones and shots."
Erik ten Hag on Victor Lindelof
Victor Lindelof was one of the best individuals in the match.
The Swede looked great paired with Raphael Varane. In the previous 9 games in which he was a starter, they recorded a clean sheet in 5 games. "Very good as well," Ten Hag said, "because if you're talking about clean sheets it's across the whole team: keeper, centre halves are very important with that fact.
I think they played a really focused game, Victor defended really well over many games in April and May. And together with Rapha he is doing great, positioning, coaching, duelling, very good."
