Luke Shaw provides damning verdict of Man Utd's defeat to Newcastle

Manchester United left-back Luke Shaw admitted the team’s lack of passion in Sunday’s defeat to Newcastle was ‘unacceptable’.

In a crucial top-four battle at St James’ Park, it was Newcastle who came out on top with a 2-0 victory that was as comfortable as the scoreline would suggest.

Manager Erik ten Hag wasted little time in blasting United’s poor attitude during the game, and Shaw confessed the players were nowhere near good enough.

“I don’t think they won the game on quality today, they won it on passion, desire, hunger, attitude, and they had higher motivation than us and that can’t be possible,” Shaw told Sky Sports.

“I feel I say the same things every time we lose. It’s not acceptable. At Manchester United that can’t be possible.

“It’s painful to say. That why I say it’s unacceptable. We can all admit that. It’s not what we want to set out to be. In big games like this you need that passion, motivation, hunger and attitude because this is an extremely tough place to come to. If we don’t have that we are going to suffer, and that was obvious on the pitch.

“We didn’t create too much and you can say [this result] has been coming even before the international break. We have dropped levels, it was clear to see today the levels were not there. We have three days to pick it back up because Brentford is going to be a very tough game.

“The players had a chat in the changing room after with no staff around because ultimately its down to us players on the pitch. It was nowhere near good enough and we had to speak and own up to it. When we go out on that pitch we all need to fight for each other and sometimes this season it hasn’t been like that. We need to realise the problems and sort them out quickly because we can still have a very good season, but not with results and performances like this.”

Ten Hag later took the opportunity to agree with Shaw’s assessment of the performance.

“Luke Shaw was right, I agree with him, Newcastle wanted it more,” he said. “They were more determined, passionate and had more desire.”