Manchester United coach Erik ten Hag defends his decision to keep Marcus Rashford on the bench during their match against Crystal Palace

Erik ten Hag explained why he put Marcus Rashford on the bench after Manchester United and Crystal Palace played to a 0-0 draw.

Rashford came on in the 61st minute at Selhurst Park. Around the middle of the first half, Alejandro Garnacho, who had started in his place, hit the crossbar just seconds before Bruno Fernandes did the same.

After the break, Palace got back into the game and stayed in the hunt thanks in large part to a great performance by goalie Dean Henderson against his old team.

Ten Hag said, “Right now there’s a lot of talk and speculation, and that’s crazy.”

“As a person, you’re not okay if you bring up ideas like that when you don’t know what’s going on.”

“Just turn this around.” We have to play a lot of games and have more than 11 players, so we have to give everyone a chance. If they do well, we will a chance.

The last thing we’ll do is find out which players do better and will play more.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with… Anything that has to do with Marcus makes me very happy. At this point, he scores with his defensive part to make it offensive.

“He plays very well, so the fact that he was on the bench had nothing to do with him; it was just his turn.”

United had the better of the first half, with the home team only getting one shot on goal, which came from Ebere Eze just before halftime.

In the second half, Palace got back on track, and Henderson made what might have been the best save of the night by diving to stop Garnacho.

Then it was Andre Onana’s turn to make the highlights reel. He first stopped Eddie Nketiah’s shot, and then he stopped substitute Ismaila Sarr’s follow-up from close range. His boss called both saves “brilliant.”

The game had more action than the score showed. The guests had six shots on target and 15 overall, while the hosts had four shots on target and nine overall.

Ten Hag said, “The only thing I can say is that we weren’t strong enough or clinical enough in the box.”

However, when asked if Rashford could have scored one of his team’s missed chances, the manager said, “I have to say Amad (Diallo) is playing good, Garnacho. All the games so far, maybe except Liverpool, he has end product.”

“We also need to play them.”

Last season was the first time in Palace’s history that they beat United twice in the league. However, they still haven’t won their first game of the new season.

They’ve drawn three times in a row after losing to Brentford and West Ham.

During the halftime talk, Oliver Glasner told his team they needed to be tougher because he thought they were losing their “personality” in the first half.

“We don’t want to play like that at any point in the game, whether we have the ball or not,” he said.

“We changed how we thought about the game in the second half so that we could play with more courage. We then made more runs from behind and went straight for their goal.”

“In the first half, we were a little too cautious or scared of something, but it looks like we could change this.”