Saka: United defeat is tough to take | Quotes | News

Friendly or no friendly, Bukayo Saka says it’s difficult to take the result against Manchester United on Saturday night.

We lost for the first time this pre-season, going down 2-0 to two first-half goals in the MetLife Stadium, and Saka said the team needs to learn the lessons from the game before the season starts in earnest next month.

“It’s obviously tough to take, whether it’s a friendly or not against United,” he said after the game. “We’ll learn from it and you can’t really give two goals away like that against a team like this because then it’s really hard to come back. We just need to learn from it.

“Physically we want to get to a level that we were at last season and then go to another level and keep increasing that. Tactically we need to integrate everyone.

"We need to understand our game plan and how we play and keep progressing in each game so that when we come to the first game we’re ready.”

Two first-half goals were enough to send us to defeat against Manchester United at a packed MetLife Stadium.

Mikel Arteta named all three summer signings - Kai Havertz, Jurrien Timber and Declan Rice – in the starting lineup for the first time, but we fell to our first defeat of pre-season when Bruno Fernandes and Jaydon Sancho netted in the first half.

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