EPL 2021-22: Ralf Rangnick issues apology to Man United fans after routing by Brighton

It was a day to forget for record 20-time former champion Manchester United in the English Premier League (EPL) 2021-22. On Saturday, it faced off against ninth-placed Brighton and Hove Albion away from home and suffered a brutal 0-4 defeat, thus ending its chances of a top-four finishing and missing out on the UEFA Champions League (UCL) next season. Meanwhile, club's caretaker manager Ralf Rangnick has apologised to the fans.

As for the match, Moisés Caicedo opened the scoring for Brighton in the 15th, as it was 1-0 at half-time. In the subsequent half, the Seagulls went for the kill, as Marc Cucurella, Pascal Gross and Leandro Trossard added three more in 49th, 57th and 60th to send United crashing. The Red Devils will now be competing for the sixth and seventh spots, the last available spots from UEFA Europa League (UEL) and UEFA Europa Conference League (ECL), respectively.

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Talking to Sky Sports after the match, Rangnick labelled the defeat as his worst at the club and said, "Yes, it was [the worst] from the first to the last minute. We were second best. We can only apologise to the supporters. It was a terrible performance and a humiliating defeat."

"I don't think the players ignored the game plan but they weren't able to stop them. We gave them too much space and time. When you give technically good players this space, this is what can happen. In the second half, we took the risk to bring on Cavani to play as a second striker, but in hindsight, it was too much of a risk to play in a 4-4-2 against them but we had to change the energy. Today, we were second best," added Rangnick.