Borussia Dortmund and holders Sevilla were among the high-profile clubs to secure comfortable wins as the Europa League’s knockout stages got underway but United were undone in the 77th minute by a goal from Paul Onuachu.
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Van Gaal lost goalkeeper David De Gea to injury in the pre-match warm-up, but there was some good news when Memphis Depay’s close-range finish put United in front after 37 minutes.
“They are specialised at set plays – they have scored 48 percent of their goals from them – so we’ll try to organise for that but it’s hard”.
Manchester United had hit the bar through Jesse Lingard before Midtjylland scored, but the Red Devils slipped to a 2-1 loss which left Van Gaal unhappy and bemoaning a series of unfortunate events for his men.
He added: “He’s a guy who wants to go until the end and if he’s feeling a pain he doesn’t want to go off. He wants to win”.
Those glory years under Alex Ferguson are long gone for United, with this latest humiliation heaping more pressure on current manager Louis van Gaal while his team stumbles in fifth place in the Premier League. We have to investigate tomorrow, with a scan or something.
Van Gaal stressed United will simply “have to cope” after an injury that takes the club’s list of unavailable senior players to 12 – a situation he described as “ridiculous”.
It is unlikely they will have got too much enjoyment out of what they saw for their money, with their team turning in another unconvincing performance. “We have seen that in the 18 months I have been here”.
As you can see from the video, De Gea was fielding shots just minutes before the match in Denmark was scheduled to begin, but after making a low save went down holding his stomach. It will not be easy, but playing at home we will fancy our chances.
“Now I can only analyse that Mid were winning these second balls and then you can expect that they score out of a few chances”.
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“It just is not good enough”. In the first ten or 15 minutes we were not so good. They’ve stuck with us and travelled tonight to support us so I can only apologise. “We have given ourselves a tougher job that we had hoped”.
