Moyes Laments Points Drop

Manchester United manager David Moyes had much to lament after his side were held at Cardiff City after leading 2-1 going into injury time.

The champions ended up only drawing 2-2 after Kim Bo-Kyung headed in a costly equaliser from a free-kick that Moyes felt should not have been conceded. And either side of that agonising moment, United substitute Danny Welbeck and the scorer of the first goal Wayne Rooney missed chances that they might have buried on another afternoon.

"I'm disappointed that we couldn't take the three points," Moyes said. "We gave away a stupid free-kick which led to the [second Cardiff] goal. But we also had a number of chances to put ourselves 3-1 up and we didn't do so, so in the end we've paid the price.

"That's two points dropped in this game and two points dropped in the Southampton game and that can be costly. We've got ourselves to blame [for that]."

The missed chance that many fans will look at was the one created by Ryan Giggs' glorious ball over the top to Rooney after Kim's equaliser. The recipient of the pass elected to feed Welbeck instead of shooting but Cardiff goalkeeper David Marshall intercepted and the opportunity was spurned.

"We actually had two chances in injury-time," noted Moyes. "Wayne had that great chance and Chris Smalling had a half-chance on the turn as well.

Before then, Welbeck had a fantastic opportunity [at 2-1] but unfortunately couldn’t take it."

Turning to the goals United conceded, the manager said the first one - scored by former Reds striker Fraizer Campbell - was well crafted but he felt his players were the architects of their own downfall for the deflating second strike.

"You have to look at all goals you concede as being poor goals but I have to say that Cardiff made two fantastic passes in the build up to their first goal. I’m not sure that they'd be able to make those passes again but today it came off and they got the goal.

"The second goal was a really poor one to let in. We should never have given away that free-kick and put ourselves in a tough position.

"Just before it, there was a bit of a melee in the box [involving Gary Medel and Marouane Fellaini]. The referee must have seen something because he stopped the play and it gave Peter Whittingham another to chance to set himself up and get his cross in. It disrupted our concentration.

"We didn't play well enough in the second half," the manager added. "We gave too many free-kicks and we allowed Cardiff to punt a lot into the box and we had to defend [against that]. For the majority of it we defended fine, we did most of the job well. But we didn't defend the cross in from the free-kick."

Moyes refused to put the result down to the absences of senior players such as the injured Robin van Persie, Shinji Kagawa and Michael Carrick and recent concussion victim Nemanja Vidic.

"We had four or five key players missing, which didn't help," said Moyes, "but that's never an excuse here because we've got enough players and even with the team we put out today we had enough players to win it. We had enough quality to win it, but unfortunately in the last minute we threw it away."