CL L Champions League Group B

VfL Wolfsburg 3:2 Manchester United

Post-match discussion


Tue, 08 December 2015

Tough to go out - but i think we all know in our heart of hearts this team wasn't good enough to line up against the best teams in Europe in the last 16.

The issue is a lack of quality and strength in depth.

Exactly. It would have been brutal to see us go against the likes of Barcelona
 
The result stings and we only have ourselves to blame for that PSV performance at Old Trafford, but I've felt worse about this United side after some wins this season.

We played some creative attacking football with a lot more direct play and freedom than we usually do, where we lost it was the grand canyon in midfield.

Very pleased with t5he young players tonight.
 
Simply not good enough. This was an easy group. I guess it saves us the heartache of being humiliated against the Bayerns, Barcas and Reals of the world.

A good learning curve for the youngsters I suppose.

For the Europa league I would seriously consider playing the U-18s. A false competition not worth the plastic cup.

My main concern is the injuries with Smalling and Darmian biting the dust, we're going to get hammered through the Christmas period.

At least it wasn't boring for once.
 
Honestly, it was a good performance.

Letting it get to this stage was unacceptable though.

Bonkers subs, too.

It was alright ... A big step up from the the normal fair... But at the same time, I don't think it's unfair that we lost.
 
Went down fighting.

Still was a hell of a lot of fun......well compared to the last couple of weeks anyway.
 
It's like the cast of Fawlty Towers have been reassembled to run a football club.

Leaving Young and Carrick on the bench for such a vital game.
Taking our best player off to be replaced by a another young fella with zero experience of this level.
Leaving a clearly injured Smalling on the pitch for 15 minutes when we have 2 full defences out injured already.
 
Good performance by youngsters and did well in forward areas but bad defending costing. It is not coming together. Good defensive performance gets coupled with stunted forward play and good forward play with error prone defense. Sigh. We will win Europa though so it is not all bad.
Many teams like Dortmund will tear us a new one if we end up facing them. Well I am glad I won't have to stay up late on weekdays to watch United matches this season.
 
That was absolutely awful defensively and there ain't no way LVG will have us play this way again and he's the perfect excuse seen as we lost and we're out.
 
It happened against West Ham too to be fair... People just seen to completely ignore what happens at one end of the pitch.
At the end of the day, we're not getting results. You can accept these things happening as a once-in-a-while blip in an otherwise good string of performances (which is what we expect.) But these days, it's either we're unlucky not to have converted chances, the other team set out to defend, we dominated possession, blah blah blah. Yes this game was exciting (as was the West Ham game,) but excitement and results shouldn't be an either/or proposition.
 
How can anyone say we didn't deserve to lose? FFS. Better going forward but appalling from a defensive midfield perspective, letting Wolfsburg run at our back four. Wolfsburg were a decent team, but not brilliant. Their second goal was dreadful positioning and defending allowing Draxler to move.

LVG's remit of "steadying the ship" continues: he qualified for the CL and he may well get us fourth again.
 
Strange feelings. Gutted about the result, but I don't think I have enjoyed a game of football as much this season. What an emotional rollercoaster this was.
 
fecking awful. The manager can't set a team up to defend and attack. It's one or the other. Sets a team up to attack, concedes three but easily could've been 6. Sets team up to play tight and control possession, and can't score a goal for all the money in the world.

Football just isn't that fecking complicated.

He talks about balance all the time, and yet churns out the most unbalanced teams game after game, and makes the most horrendous subs imaginable. Powell? What the actual feck?

The man has to go. He's done all he can do. The longer he is here, the more it'll hold us back. We need a manager who we can plan with for the next 3-5 years. Not a lame duck who has 18 months to run on his contract, and has generated the ire of fans and players alike.

Goodbye!
 
How can anyone say we didn't deserve to lose? FFS. Better going forward but appalling from a defensive midfield perspective, letting Wolfsburg run at our back four. Wolfsburg were a decent team, but not brilliant. Their second goal was dreadful positioning and defending allowing Draxler to move.

LVG's remit of "steadying the ship" continues: he qualified for the CL and he may well get us fourth again.
and this is why I want him out, it's becoming increasingly clear that we're not going to progress forward with him in charge.
 
The youngsters are making me excited about the future, Lingard, Martial, Varela, and CBJ(plus the likes of McNair, Perriera, and Wilson are all extremely talented, very impressed with CBJ tonight.
 
Think you guys have been far too hard on your team/players, showed great spirit. You leave it to the last matchday and disappointment looms.

I've only caught glimpses of United this season but I don't recall seeing such high octane offense. I thought there were a lot of positives to take and most importantly they matched the intensity of Wolfsburg away. Just pretty unlucky
 
Can you imagine had we got through and met the likes of Madrid?

We would be destroyed.

Count our lucky stars we are out now instead of fooling ourselvez.
 
Strange feelings. Gutted about the result, but I don't think I have enjoyed a game of football as much this season. What an emotional rollercoaster this was.

It was an all or nothing cup tie all right. Shame we came away losing but given the group we were in, it should never have come down to this.
 
Can't fault the effort of the lads in the second half. They really went for it, and it was just not meant to be in the end. We applied a lot of pressure on their defence and were perhaps unlucky not to have scored 3 or 4, but on the other hand, they hit us on the break all game and it was a testament to how poorly our midfield protected our back line and thus how badly they played. We worked so hard to get it back to 2 2 but to then let it slip straight after was naive and hard to take.

De Gea obviously made some great saves and wasn't at fault for any of the goals. Martial played well up front and thought Mata and Varela also had useful games. Memphis was poor in the first half but did well in the second. No excuses for Schweinsteiger and Fellaini (though did well for the goal) who couldn't get close to their midfield, while Blind and Smalling had a tough job at the back.

Down to the Europa League we go and I'm not too enthusiastic about playing in it. We have got the league to focus on now and with a tonne of injuries and a run of poor results, pressure is mounting on LVG.
 
Are you not entertained?!!

Great game but it came at the expense of so many injuries and our place in the CL
 
Well, it wasn't boring. The injuries are starting to catch up to us.

What in the world was Powell doing on the pitch though? One of the craziest subs LVG has made so far.
 
Think you guys have been far too hard on your team/players, showed great spirit. You leave it to the last matchday and disappointment looms.

I've only caught glimpses of United this season but I don't recall seeing such high octane offense. I thought there were a lot of positives to take and most importantly they matched the intensity of Wolfsburg away. Just pretty unlucky
Completely agree.
 
I'm more gutted about the amount of injuries, than us being knocked out. Obviously I'm gutted we are out, but feck me, these injuries need to feck right off.
 
The damage was done beforehand, i didn't expect any different tonight. No one to blame but LVG.
 
and this is why I want him out, it's becoming increasingly clear that we're not going to progress forward with him in charge.
Let's stick with LVG and his remit to keep us in the mix. Only 18 months to go and we await the new "philosophy". It was entertaining tonight mostly for all the wrong reasons though.
 
The 0-0 with PSV was what killed us, we spent the last 20 minutes of that game acting like we were trying to run down the clock and didn't need a goal. If we'd shown the short of urgency we did tonight it could have made a huge difference.
 
It was far from boring, I suppose.

Just no luck tonight. Darmian and Smalling injuries, Verela looked injured late on as well, to add to the mountain of existing injuries. Countless blocks in the 6 yard box. It just wouldn't go in.

Overall, we didn't go out tonight. We went out against PSV at home. That was the must win game. You have to win your home games, and pick up a point or two away, and you're through. Tonight's game would have just been a group-topper if we'd have won the games we should have. Instead we're coming out of it with another pile of injuries and nothing to show for it.

All of last season was about getting back into the Champions League, and it's over already.
 
Shades of 2005.

I'm not disappointed about losing this game, the PSV game is what killed us. We've been unlucky(?) with injuries, and this was an awfully young team, with the more experienced players letting us down: BFS, Fellaini, Mata...
 

Player Ratings

5.5 Total Average Rating

Highest Rated Player

Lowest Rated Player

Compiled from 493 ratings.

Score Predictions

357,164,222
  • Man Utd win
  • Wolfsburg win
  • Draw

Detailed Results

  • 19% Wolfsburg 0:1 Man Utd
  • 18% Wolfsburg 0:0 Man Utd
  • 14% Wolfsburg 1:2 Man Utd
  • 12% Wolfsburg 1:1 Man Utd
  • 9% Wolfsburg 2:0 Man Utd
  • 8% Wolfsburg 0:2 Man Utd
  • 6% Wolfsburg 1:0 Man Utd
  • 5% Wolfsburg 2:1 Man Utd
  • 3% Wolfsburg 1:3 Man Utd
  • 1% Wolfsburg 0:3 Man Utd
  • 1% Wolfsburg 0:5 Man Utd
  • 1% Wolfsburg 3:1 Man Utd
  • 1% Wolfsburg 3:0 Man Utd
  • 1% Wolfsburg 2:3 Man Utd
  • 0% Wolfsburg 1:4 Man Utd
  • 0% Wolfsburg 0:4 Man Utd
  • 0% Wolfsburg 2:2 Man Utd
  • 0% Wolfsburg 4:1 Man Utd
  • 0% Wolfsburg 5:0 Man Utd
  • 0% Wolfsburg 5:5 Man Utd
  • 0% Wolfsburg 4:0 Man Utd
  • 0% Wolfsburg 2:4 Man Utd
  • 0% Wolfsburg 3:2 Man Utd
Compiled from 743 predictions.
Show more results Score Predictions League Table

Match Stats

  1. Wolfsburg
  2. Man Utd
Possession
45% 55%
Shots
10 18
Shots on Target
6 6
Corners
6 5
Fouls
8 13

Referee

Milorad Mazic