Manchester United boss Ralf Rangnick admits they were "second best" in all areas for defeat at Brighton.

United were hammered 4-0 at Falmer stadium.

Rangnick said, "Yes it was [a poor performance]. From the first to the last minute this was not enough and in all-important areas we were second best. To start with we can only apologise to our supporters, it was a terrible performance and a humiliating defeat. It was a completely different game and today from the first minute we allowed them too much time, too much space and we were never able to be in a position to stop them playing through our lines.

"The game plan was completely different, we told the players to be as compact as we could possibly be but we couldn't stop them.

"We had big problems with their width through their wing-backs, we couldn't stop their wing-backs as they were always pretty high and wide. For us it was whenever they played the diagonal ball we struggled with those balls although we told our full-backs that they should get out earlier.

"It was very, very difficult to stop them in the first half at all and in the second half we took the risk to bring Edi [Cavani] on as a second striker and Fred and went to a 4-4-2. In hindsight it was maybe a little bit of a risk to play a 4-4-2 against them, but we had to try and change the energy. Today we were second best in all relevant areas."