Van Gaal's View On Midtjylland Defeat

Manchester United suffered a shock 2-1 defeat to FC Midtjylland on Thursday night and Louis van Gaal was bitterly disappointed when talking to the media following the final whistle. Here are the main points from the manager's post-match press conference...

Injury list

"I think it is the law of Murphy, when you have a list of 13 injured players and a few minutes before the game we can add another player to the list. Then it is difficult to cope with such a list of injured players."

De Gea's problem

“It happened in the warm up. We have to wait and see for the scan tomorrow, then maybe we can say more but it was a big surprise.”

Overview

"After 10 or 15 minutes we controlled the match, we scored a goal but we also gave a goal away. One minute before half-time and that is a difficult time to concede a goal. In the second half I have to say that Midtjylland were winning every ball and that was very disappointing because you know in advance that this is the key to this game. Then they score, and when you see how they score it is a little bit unnecessary in my opinion. But still we have a chance [to go through in the tie] I think."

“We have to speak about why our players were not capable of winning the second balls, to keep the ball in our possession, because we had a lot of unnecessary losses of the ball. Now I can only analyse that Midtjylland were winning these second balls and then you can expect they will score out of a few chances. But we could have scored also, Jesse Lingard could have scored two times I think. In spite of that we could have also finished the game.”

Players' attitude

“It is nothing to do with attitude. All of the players want to perform in an excellent way so attitude is not the case. We were not winning the second balls. That is my analysis."

Disappointing for the travelling fans

“It is disappointing for them like we are disappointed. I am very grateful for the fans who supported us but we wanted to win and now we have to win at Old Trafford and then we are in the next round. We have to do it, it will not be easy but we have to do it.”

Difficulties marking Paul Onuachu

“We had a lot of difficulty with him and we have to cope better with that. Maybe he shall play at Old Trafford and we have to cope with that problem. We had a lot of problems with him, we had less with Pusic.”