The rusty Manchester United defence have conceded 8 goals in their last 3 Premiership games. The farce began on the 31st of January when they conceded 2 at home to Southampton and progressed to an even more terrible defensive display against Everton conceding 3. But that wasn't the end of it- United leaked 3 goals to Middlesbrough at Old Trafford.

Ferguson had a lot to say about it.

"There has been some bad defending in recent matches and we have to do something about it." he said

"We are putting pressure on ourselves and a bit of slackness seems to have crept into our defending at times."

"Our first priority is to defend. We are not doing that enough and that is not acceptable."

The Scotsman also claims that they are indeed missing Rio Ferdinand and that if they United continue their form they will concede to Arsenal.

"Arsenal haven't lost any and that is the gulf. They are five points ahead of us and we need to make sure we don't make any mistakes. We can't afford to lose another game,"

"You are bound to miss a player of Rio's quality," said Ferguson.

"It's frustrating because he was well on the way to developing as effective a partnership with Mikael Silvestre as we had before with Steve Bruce and Gary Pallister. Unfortunately that has been broken by the suspension." he added.