• Premier League

Koeman: Everything is s*** because we lost

Ronald Koeman was left furious that "the better team lost" after Southampton slipped to their third consecutive defeat against Manchester United on Monday.

An impressive start to the season had Southampton keeping pace with Chelsea at the top of the Premier League, but defeats against fellow top four contenders Manchester City, Arsenal and now United have seen them fall to fifth.

And Koeman was as straight talking as usual, saying: "The score is 1-2 and you can talk much longer about who played football, which team pressed, but everything is s*** because we lost.

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Louis van Gaal was clearly not happy despite Manchester United's victory over Southampton © Getty Images

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"On football and chances, I think we deserved more."

Koeman blamed the defeat on an inability to bounce back from mistakes. He added: "We played our style. We don't like to play long ball. We had good ball possession. We like to press our opponent very early.

"We did everything to create chances, but we also did mistakes. Maybe they did more mistakes than we did, but they have players who handle those kind of mistakes. And that was the difference."

Van Persie's first goal was put on a plate when Saints defender Jose Fonte misjudged a back-pass to goalkeeper Fraser Forster.

"If you give players like Van Persie those kind of mistakes, he will punish you," Koeman said. "There was [Man City's Sergio] Aguero, now Van Persie, and we didn't punish them those kind of mistakes."

Prior to the match most of the column inches were devoted to Manchester United boss Louis Van Gaal facing off against his former protégé Koeman.

Van Gaal gave Koeman his first coaching role when he was at Barcelona, but relations soured when Koeman was in charge at Ajax and Van Gaal became the club's technical director.

The United manager was in agreement with Koeman that his side were fortunate to win, calling his side "very lucky".

And Koeman added: "At this level the difference is detail in the game and to handle when opponents make mistakes but we had more chances in the game, we played better. We had more possession, but the result is 2-1 and I said to the lads we didn't lose to United, we lost to ourselves."

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