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MANCHESTER UNITED: Solskjaer disappointed by Basaksehir loss

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer felt Manchester United’s performance wasn’t good enough in the 2-1 Champions League defeat to Istanbul Basaksehir.

The hosts netted twice in the first period on Wednesday courtesy of Demba Ba and Edin Visca, with Anthony Martial scoring for United just before the break.

It leaves us with six points from the first three games in Group H, and we will remain top regardless of the scoreline in Germany tonight between RB Leipzig and Paris Saint-Germain, due to a superior head-to-head record with both sides.

Speaking after the game in Istanbul, during his press conference and interviews with MUTV and BT Sport, the boss was asked about the frustrating display and the decision to replace Axel Tuanzebe at half-time.

He also looked ahead to this weekend’s Premier League encounter with Everton

DISAPPOINTING SHOWING

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“The performance wasn’t good enough against a team that worked and ran and they hit us on the break a couple of times and scored two goals like sometimes you do in Europe when you don’t defend well enough. Of course we picked a team to win the game. We hoped we had enough to create chances, we just didn’t. Emotions don’t matter – when you lose, well you can think to yourself how we feel after we lose, that’s not something we go out to do.”

CONCEDING TWO

“The first one, we play a short corner and we forget about the man up top and that’s unforgivable. You don’t see goals like that at this level. It’s not good enough. You shouldn’t concede easy goals like that. Obviously, it’s not a goal you normally concede so we’ve not done our duties now or done our roles. I have to say that’s my responsibility. We went to play a short corner but forgot our defending after we played a couple of passes. The second one as well, we’re not very well organised to counter press and win the ball back when we’re playing. Two soft goals to give away and then we didn’t have enough to come back in the second half. We scored from a cross, a good goal by Anthony and then you think 45 minutes to save something from the game. The second half we threw everything at it but we couldn’t break them down.”

TUANZEBE SUBSTITUTION

“Well, it’s a yellow card here. We needed to go for it and gamble to go forward, so the yellow card made my decision there.”

VAN DE BEEK PERFORMANCE

“Tactically, we had to change something towards the end and we brought other players on. Donny got on the ball well and showed his intelligence. Sometimes I felt the whole team was leaning way too much over to the left, we were too open down our right-hand side when one or two players wanted to play football over on the other side. Donny was part of the team, he’s come into the club and showed his quality but today he didn’t really get the opportunity to shine.”

DROPPED POINTS IN THE GROUP

“It’s set us back a lot, of course it has, because you get a reality check every time you play a football game. Nothing becomes history quicker than a game of football. You don’t just turn up and get three points in the Champions League, that’s shown here today. We played against a lot of good individuals in a good team. They were well set up, well organised and we were not good enough. That’s it.”

LOOKING FORWARD TO EVERTON

“It’s not easy to be positive now, of course it isn’t when you just lost the way we did. But these players are good players and we have a chance on Saturday to get going again. The last two results have been a punch to the stomach. The only way I know to respond, and I hope the players as well, is to get your act together for Everton”

Tambua Africa Reporter

Blogger and news writer at Tambua Africa News.

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