Foster reveals tactic to beat Man United that wouldn’t work against Liverpool or City

Ben Foster has explained how Watford beat Manchester United, and why the simple tactics wouldn’t work against Liverpool and Manchester City.

Erik ten Hag lost his opening fixture as United boss against Brighton 2-1 in the Premier League, and Foster saw it coming after matching up against the Red Devils last season.

Watford were relegated from the Premier League last season with games to spare, but enjoyed season highs against English giants United, going undefeated against them.

In November, the Hornets demolished United 4-1 at Vicarage Road, a scoreline so humiliating it saw Ole Gunnar Solskjaer sacked in the aftermath.

Then in February, they held Ralf Rangnick’s vintage to a scoreless draw at Old Trafford, with the same tactics proving just as effective.

Foster, who was a United player between 2010 and 2015, starred in both of those matches and explained the game plan while speaking to talkSPORT.

“When you’re playing someone like Man United you’ve just got to go up against them,” he said.

“They have got quality players but if you get up into them they will struggle a little bit and that’s always the way that we tried to approach those games.

“The longer the game went on the more Manchester United fans would get onto the Manchester United players’ backs and you could feel this sort of atmosphere and that’s what’s wrong with it at the minute.

“There’s a little bit of an atmosphere and around Old Trafford where they’re used to winning, they’ve got [Cristiano] Ronaldo back in the ranks expecting to still be scoring hat-tricks and it’s not quite working like that at the minute.”

Foster, 39, is currently a free agent, and spent the opening weekend of the Premier League season watching former club United, and wasn’t at all surprised to see them lose 2-1 to Brighton.

“Manchester United in general are vulnerable,” he explained. “I watched the game on Saturday and I predicted before the game that Manchester United would lose the game.

“Fair play to Brighton, they’ve lost a couple of massive players, [Marc] Cucurella, [Yves] Bissouma going as well, and you would expect it to have taken a toll on them.

“They went there and they played the way Graham Potter gets them playing and they looked technically just as good as Man United if not better and that’s the worrying part when a team like Brighton comes to Old Trafford and looks just as good as Man United.”