Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has reacted to the club’s elimination from the UEFA Champions League.

United headed into the winner-takes-all encounter with RB Leipzig needing to avoid defeat to progress to the knock-out stages, but a 3-2 loss meant it was the Germans who progressed.
 
Speaking after the game, Ole felt the damage was done with the poor first-half showing, while he also reflected on other results which cost United a place in the next round and gave his thoughts on conceding the first goal again.

He told BT Sports: “Close at the end, but you can’t expect to go through when you go three goals down against a good team like Leipzig.

I can’t fault the character and effort and pressure that we put on them all second half, where we deserved more almost.

But you can’t give a team a three-goal lead and expect to come back. Just too late, unlucky towards the end.”

On falling behind again, Solskjaer said, “Yeah, well we have started games okay and played well, but conceded the first and second goals in games.

Today we started too passive. Not aggressive enough in closing down the crosses or the diagonal balls and, of course, this is something that we prepared for. We knew they were going to put loads of crosses into the box and we just couldn’t deal with them.”

He added, “Today we just didn’t turn up until we scored the second goal; suddenly again we started playing again.

We had one chance at 1-0, Mason [Greenwood] had a good chance, but after 2-0 we started playing.

The second half was one-way traffic more or less and the one chance they had they managed to score.

So 3-0 was always going to be difficult, but they all gave everything, very good character and effort.

I can’t fault anyone and we were close to getting the third and that would have been some achievement against a team like Leipzig.”