No excuses for Manchester United's poor start under Moyes insists Ryan Giggs

Reds risk losing three straight league games for first time in 12 years - and player/coach "can't put my finger on" what's wrong

Waning champions: Giggs and co have lost three of their first six league games

Matthew Peters

Ryan Giggs has admitted Manchester United’s players can have no excuse for their worst start to a season for 24 years.

Reigning champions United will be bidding to avoid a third straight Premier League defeat for the first time in 12 years when they travel to Sunderland this weekend.

Back-to-back defeats to neighbours Manchester City and at home to West Brom have piled the pressure on Sir Alex Ferguson’s successor David Moyes.

Moyes saw his players take a step in the right direction with a creditable 1-1 draw away to Shakhtar Donetsk in the Champions League on Wednesday.

And veteran midfielder Giggs, making a record-breaking 145th appearance in Europe’s elite competition, said United must now go on a sustained winning run and show just why they are the Premier League champions.

“It hasn’t been a great start to the season but the good thing about that is we have plenty of time to turn it around,” said Giggs.

“We know what this club is like, it’s ups and downs. We don’t get carried away if we’re flying and we don’t get carried away when we’re not playing well.

“I can’t put my finger on what has happened. We’ve just not played as well as we can both individually and as a team.

“The results have shown we haven’t played as well as we can do. But we know the quality in the dressing room.

“We’re the champions so we showed that quality last year and we have to show it again.
“Sir Alex was a great manager and a great influence on the team and the club. You’re going to miss someone like that. But I don’t think that’s an excuse when individuals aren’t playing as well as they can.

“We’re not playing well as a team. We haven’t got injury problems as we have had in the past. So there’s no excuse.


“There are 20-odd players there and there are places to be had. If you do well you stay in the team and hopefully we can do that.

“Against West Brom we probably weren’t hard to beat like we were in Donetsk. We needed to sort that out and I felt we did.

“It was a tough start for us because we played against all the top teams but that is no excuse. We just haven’t played as well as we can.”

Giggs admitted United had been too open in the 4-1 derby defeat to City and the 2-1 loss to West Brom, and needed to make themselves hard to beat again.

“We saw that [teams cutting through United] at the weekend and you just can’t have that in the Premier League,” said the Welshman.

“If you expect to go on a run and put pressure on the top teams, we have to sort that out. We did it against Shakhtar and we have to carry on doing that for the rest of the season.”

 

 Despite United’s poor start, Giggs said the patchy form of title rivals City had given United’s players hope of clawing their way back into contention.

“It’s a weird season,” he said. “City have been beaten twice. Nobody has hit the ground running who we’d have expected to.

“Obviously Arsenal are playing well, Tottenham and Liverpool are at the top, but there’s enough time for us to turn it around and get back to the top and stay there.

“There are other teams getting beaten around us. We have plenty of time but we need to start doing it quickly and at the weekend.

“It’s not the most difficult season I’ve had in my career. There have been topsy-turvy seasons in the past.
“I have been in the team for 20-odd years and seen more or less everything.

“You’d rather be showing this form at the start of the season than at the end. You have just got to hang in there to the turn of the year as we always say and then hopefully hit a bit of form like we historically do. We have to take responsibilities as players and try and do that.

“Being a player/coach hasn’t affected me really. As an experienced player you always try and help the younger players and I’ve been doing that for the last five or six years, so it’s not an added pressure.
“I have to a responsibility to myself to make sure we do as best as we can.”