Ole Gunnar Solskjaer
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer admitted blame for the frantic Champions League eviction of Manchester United after they struggled to take a point from their last two group games.
After victory over Istanbul Basaksehir two weeks ago, United needed one point to qualify for the last 16, but lost at home to Paris Saint-Germain and were defeated by RB Leipzig.
After just a minute from Manchester City loanee Angelino, Leipzig took the lead and were 3-0 up with 10 minutes to go before two quick goals from Bruno Fernandes and Paul Pogba threatened a remarkable United revival. However, For the second time on Solskjaer’s tenure, United are relegated to the Europa League and the Norwegian regretted another bad start from his side.
Ole said, “We didn’t perform as a team well enough and that’s always the manager’s responsibility, to get everyone ready. We knew they were going to come at us, we knew they were going to put crosses in the box and unfortunately we conceded two goals and never got going. In games, earlier now with the way we conceded the first goal, we played pretty well. Today we just didn’t turn up until they scored the second goal, suddenly then we started playing again. Three-nil down is difficult but they all gave everything. Good character, good effort, can’t fault anyone and we were close to getting the third and that would have been some achievement against a good team like Leipzig. You can’t say that we were good enough. We weren’t good enough. We were in a difficult group and started well and obviously the big turning point was the loss away in Istanbul. That’s where we lost points we should have got. Today we had to defend crosses into the box and we just didn’t deal with them. We can feel sorry for ourselves tonight but then we have to focus on the game against Manchester City this weekend.”
