Manchester United are out of the Champions League after a 1-0 home defeat to Atletico Madrid.
This was United’s fifth consecutive European exit at the hands of a Spanish club, and it leaves the club back at square one in the desire to be a competitive team at the top level.
Why did it go so wrong? Why were United so flat? Those are questions the management will be looking at to try and resolve, heading into a two week break until the club’s next game. But ultimately there are no second chances.
This was knockout football, and United are out of the Champions League and it could be over a year before the club return.
Before we dwell on a future which has a mix of uncertainty and promise, let’s take another look at exactly what went wrong.
Failure to break down Atletico’s well-drilled backline
For several seasons we have seen United fail to break down defensively resilient teams. When this United side could not even find a way through Watford a fortnight ago, we should have seen the writing on the wall for this game.
United came out the blocks quickly, before Atletico weathered the storm and hit United on the counter. From there on, it was a backs to the wall job for the Spanish side, who brought out all their old timewasting tricks to frustrate the Red Devils.
This may be quite a straightforward response, but United are out because they didn’t score. Football really is that simple sometimes.
For the 61 per cent possession United had, the team managed only five shots on target. Goalkeeper Jan Oblak was equal to anything United threw at him, which in the second half, was not as frequent as the team had hoped.
United could not get service into Cristiano Ronaldo, and he had to drop deeper than he would have liked. Rangnick threw on plenty of substitutes, but there was no real cohesion.
Star players simply did not perform
There are not really any Manchester Untied players who can turn around and claim to have had good games. The worst part of Ronaldo’s display was that he did not have a single shot. This was after having eight against Tottenham. This number speaks volumes to the way Atletico shut him down.
Anthony Elanga and Jadon Sancho tried hard but missed United’s best chances, while apart from one excellent effort at the end of the first half, Bruno Fernandes was ineffective.
The substitutes came on and the hope of the cavalry failed to make an impact. Paul Pogba may as well have been invisible, while Marcus Rashford was listless as usual.
Edinson Cavani ran around without making an impact, also unable to attempt a shot, and the only bright spark was Juan Mata, making just his fifth appearances of the season.
Woeful defending
Manchester United have just the 12th best defensive record in the Premier League, conceding more than twice the number of goals Chelsea have.
Ultimately at the top level, this gets teams found out. Atletico did not attack often, but when they did, they carved through United too easily.
Dalot had a tricky game defensively, while Harry Maguire was particularly poor as usual, looking particularly slow on the ball whenever he turned to pass back to David de Gea.
United have to fix this and there was ironic applause when Maguire was substituted late as Rangnick made an attacking change.
Poor refereeing
Manager Ralf Rangnick was highly critical of Slovenian referee Slavko Vincic after the game. And at the final whistle the players made clear they were not happy.
Rangnick said Vincic’s decisions were ‘curious’ and the decision to award just four minutes of injury time, considering Atletico’s timewasting.
The big decision came to wave play on when Anthony Elanga appeared to be fouled, and Atletico scored straight afterwards. Bruno Fernandes could also have had a penalty in the first half.
Part of the frustration was that Vincic played into Atletico’s hands and United did not get a fair shake at this game. That’s part of the gamesmanship United must learn to deal with to be ruthless, and on this night, the team did not handle adversity well.
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