Transfer news: 'There is an urgency for reinforcements,' admits Manchester United manager David Moyes following FA Cup defeat

But manager could give no assurances that the club will be able to do so

Manchester United manager David Moyes walks off the pitch dejected after the final whistle (PA)

David Moyes admitted that there is an “urgency” to reinforce his Manchester United squad with new players this month, following his team’s 2-1 FA Cup third round home defeat to Swansea City, although he could give no assurances that the club will be able to do so.

The embattled United manager has now lost four of his last six home games and the defeat at Old Trafford meant his club are out at the FA Cup third round stage for just the third time in 30 years. His predecessor Sir Alex Ferguson lost just once in the FA Cup third round in almost 27 years in charge of the club.

Asked whether this defeat would focus minds on signing new players this month, he said: “There is an urgency that we would like to bring people in but are those players available in January? So there is no point in me hyping it up because the players we would like to bring in are probably not available in January, not because we don’t want to do it.”

As for the defeat to Swansea, the club’s seventh of the season in all competitions, Moyes said that there were “no excuses”. He has seven players missing with injury, including Wayne Rooney and Robin Van Persie, and in addition, Nemanja Vidic was not in the squad. Moyes said: “No excuse, we had a very strong team out, just about every player we had out was an international player, maybe Alex Buttner wasn’t but the others are internationals.”

Moyes had no complaints about a sending off for Fabio Da Silva, a substitute who spent just four minutes on the pitch. Wilfried Bony scored the winner in the 90th minute, ten minutes after the red card challenge by Fabio on substitute Jose Canas.

Moyes said: “I thought we played quite well in the first half. We should have taken more chances when the opportunities were there to create more chances as well. I don’t think we come away thinking we deserved to lose the game but we did do. Going down to 10 men was a turning point as well.

“It just changed it a little bit. I thought we had most control of the game. We needed to make more chances and opportunities. I thought we were relatively comfortable without getting the second goal.”

The United midfielder Darren Fletcher was critical of the team’s performance. “It’s a massive blow, let’s not kid ourselves here,” he said. “This is a really bad result, and there are a lot of angry, hurt players. We feel we have let the manager and the fans and everyone down by losing and it’s not good enough. We have to raise our performance levels.”

“We’re letting the fans down but to be fair to them, they are really sticking by us, and that’s great to see as well and we’ve got to repay that, and I think the players saw that today coming off. When we got to the Stretford End there was a lot of fans clapping and singing for United so the players have got to really see that and know that they are behind us and put in performances for the fans, and the manager, and his staff and it’s got to happen soon rather than later and there’s no better way than the League Cup semi-final against Sunderland [on Tuesday].”