Reactions to United's defeat against Bayern Munich

1. If someone had told you when the draw was made that United would lose 4-2 on aggregate, you would probably be fairly happy with that. The expectation was that United were going to get battered and a 4-2 to scoreline is pretty reasonable. We are the 7th best team in England playing against the German and European champions, yet, bizarrely, this feels likely an opportunity lost.

2. Patrice Evra is a hugely popular player amongst United fans and it was fantastic to see him put us 1-0 up. What a fantastic strike. I could hardly believe it when I saw it hit the back of the net. He hit it so well, as well as he would dream of hitting it, and celebrating as you would imagine, kissing the badge and saluting the travelling support. He gets it. Evra is a red. But he is still a liability and was still at fault for two Bayern goals. He just doesn’t have the pace or awareness that he once had, and whilst he’s a regular threat on the attack, he is a regular liability defensively.

3. Wayne Rooney wasn’t fit tonight and if he was going to play, should have only featured for an hour maximum. To play him for 90 minutes was absolutely bonkers. Two good chances fell to him which, on another night, he probably would have done much better with. He hesitated for the first. He didn’t shoot and then didn’t pass to Shinji Kagawa, who was in space, but instead waited and then hit it against the defender. In the second half he had an even better opportunity to score but snatched at and didn’t even hit the target. Over 90 minutes he completed just eight passes in the opposition half, which is embarrassing, when you consider Phil Jones completed 11.

4. David Moyes appeared to get it right tonight, just as he did in the first leg, begging the question why he had so regularly got it wrong in big games this season. At 1-0 up we were looking good. Even when Bayern equalised, it wasn’t a big deal. We had to presume that they were going to score at home against us. Even when they went 2-1 up, it was fair enough. We knew we had to score a second goal once they had equalised, so going 2-1 up made no difference. But it was bizarre to see Darren Fletcher get hooked for Chicharito. Bringing Hernandez on was an obvious substitution, but given than Rooney clearly wasn’t fit, he seemed to be the obvious player to take off. Who knows whether Fletch would have made a difference to Bayern going 3-1 up less than two minutes later, but it was an unnecessarily risky move from Moyes. Take Rooney off! To then wait until there was less than 10 minutes to go to bring on Adnan Januzaj was equally as strange. But then to take off Danny Welbeck, the only player to really stretch the Germans thanks to Rooney’s lack of mobility, was actually mental. I know we can all be armchair managers, using hindsight to berate the manager, but Moyes’ decisions didn’t even need hindsight to highlight just how poor they were.

5. Last season we used to sing “hard to believe it’s not Scholes, it’s Carrick, you know” on a weekly basis. Most weeks, we would sing it several times a game. He kept the ball for the team, he completed more passes than anyone on the pitch time and again, and whilst Robin van Persie scored all the goals, Carrick was crucial to our title winning team. It was no surprise when his peers voted him in to the shortlist for the PFA Player of the Year, making the top six for players in the Premier League. This season he has been a shadow of the player he was last season and last night’s game showed that perfectly. In 90 minutes of football he attempted just 29 passes and completed just 22. That’s less than 13 players. That is an absolutely appalling return and was totally unheard of last season. He has nowhere near the influence on games that he had last season and should be desperately disappointed with his performance tonight.

6. Whilst the result is a pretty disappointing, United fans will likely be fairly hopeful for the future. Imagine if Kroos, who completed more passes than anyone on the pitch, played for us instead of them. According to the press Kroos has told his team mates he wants to sign for United and Ed Woodward is staying over night in Munich to agree a deal. We aren’t a million times away from having a quality side. But I can’t abide by the people who say Moyes needs more time. He almost gets it right, fairly often, but very, very rarely does get it right. I’m not arsed about us being average sides away from home, something he has excelled in since joining United, and his inability to make the correct substitutions, at the correct times, is just further evidence to me that the man is massively out of his depth. I like him, I think he’s a good bloke, but he’s never a United manager, and the sooner we end this madness and appoint someone qualified, the better.