Stoke City condemned Manchester United to a fourth straight defeat to increase the pressure on manager Louis van Gaal.<\/p>\n
Bojan Krkic broke the deadlock after a poor header back to David de Gea from Memphis Depay allowed Glen Johnson to play it back to the Spanish forward.<\/p>\n
Stoke went 2-0 ahead through Marko Arnautovic’s 25-yard finish after Bojan’s free-kick had hit the wall.<\/p>\n
Van Gaal dropped captain Wayne Rooney, who came on as a half-time substitute, and United struggled to create chances.<\/p>\n
Stoke, who climbed three places to eighth in the Premier League, were superior throughout and could have won by more.<\/p>\n
Arnautovic missed a great chance to add to United’s misery when clean through, while Potters keeper Jack Butland denied Marouane Fellaini, Anthony Martial and Juan Mata.<\/p>\n
Rooney decision backfires badly on Van Gaal<\/strong><\/p>\n Van Gaal was already under pressure before kick-off after a poor run of form but the manner of United’s defeat at the Britannia Stadium – together with the manager’s decision to leave out England skipper Rooney – is bound to raise more questions about the Dutchman’s future.<\/p>\n United rarely looked like getting back into the game after falling behind and showed little desire and leadership as they found themselves outmuscled and outfought by an impressive Stoke side.<\/p>\n They were already 2-0 behind after an awful first-half display when Rooney, starting on the bench in a league match for the first time since 28 January 2014, was introduced at the start of the second period.<\/p>\n They improved after the break, but Stoke, managed by former United forward Mark Hughes, deserved their victory.<\/p>\n \n –<\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Stoke City condemned Manchester United to a fourth straight defeat to increase the pressure on manager Louis van Gaal. Bojan Krkic broke the deadlock after a poor header back to David de Gea from Memphis Depay allowed Glen Johnson to play it back to the Spanish forward. Stoke went 2-0 ahead through Marko Arnautovic’s 25-yard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":177338,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[3,38],"class_list":["post-177337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-ghana-news","tag-palaver-newspaper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=177337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/177338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=177337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=177337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=177337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}