Part two Ralf Rangnick pre match press conference Liverpool v Man Utd 18 April 2022

Is that why you’ve not had the chance to change as much as you would have hoped?
“A few things happened. We also have to be honest with that. We lost a few players that we shouldn’t have lost. I spoke about that last week, bearing in mind what kind of offensive players we had available against West Ham. Which substitutions I could make in the last 15 minutes. Three of them are no longer here or injured, continuously injured. We lost other players. Right now we have a few injuries to important players who would normally be in the starting 11. Again, this is no excuse no alibi. This is also an issue that worries me a little bit, the number of injuries that we currently have. If I compare to Liverpool, even though they are still competing in four competitions, I think they have no injury problems at all. We only play in the Premier League and we have five, six players injured. This is also an issue that needs to be taken care of for the future. To analyse why is that the case, why does that happen? But again, for us now it is about travelling to Liverpool tomorrow, show our very, very best performance that we can show on the pitch, and show everybody, and this is what I expect from all the players being involved tomorrow, that we are good enough and that we want to win the game tomorrow.”

Some of the older fans in the stadium [on Saturday] said they could never remember so much criticism of the players from inside the stadium. I just wondered if you felt you needed to talk to your players since, and whether they have been affected at all?
“No I think the players will realise that themselves. I’m not so sure that this is fair towards the players because I know that they care and they suffer after defeats like against Everton and they don’t like that kind of feeling, to not win games or even lose games. But again I can also understand the supporters. They are frustrated, they had higher expectations, they don’t understand why things happened. In the end, it’s up to the club, to the board, to the people in charge to analyse that but not now. That is something to do at the end of the season.”