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.