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What Went Wrong For Manchester United Against PSV?

The magical night which was supposed to take United back to the upper echelons of European football fell way short than expected. The Red Devils were humbled by PSV Eindhoven and were beaten 2-1 by the home side. United also now will be without Luke Shaw who suffered a double fracture and is expected to be out for the season.

Luke Shaw
Luke Shaw injury

Manchester United’s Louis van Gaal now has a worse record in his games in charge at the club than David Moyes and that will not be good reading. Manchester United’s fallacies were laid bare by an effective PSV team and we look back at the Champions League loss to find out what went wrong with Manchester United.

No sharpness in attack

Manchester United started with Anthony Martial up in the attack in place of Wayne Rooney and the French youngster did have a decent game but it was his other teammates who let United down. The stats state that United had 17 shots on goal, but only five were on target. Memphis Depay might have scored on his return to his former club, but he could have scored more had he taken the chances presented to him in the second half.

Memphis Depay
Memphis Depay

Even the now reliable Juan Mata had an off day and was guilty of missing the target, especially when he could not control a brilliant pass from Bastian Schweinsteiger. Mata wasn’t just at fault for not scoring, he was given the freedom to play in the number 10 role but he had a torrid day for United and this could cost him big time in the next set of games for Manchester United.

Manchester United also could not do much with more than the 60% possession that they had, dominating an away game in the UEFA Champions League is a rarity and having achieved that the club would have expected to come away with a point at least. Manchester United also had another issue which was regarding the movement of the players, for all the talk about a philosophy from Louis van Gaal, Manchester United don’t really seem to have a proper game plan and the players were not able to keep tabs on the movement of the PSV players.

Louis van Gaal
Louis van Gaal

The Dutch club didn’t have a lot of possession, but they used what little they had extremely well and took the two goals really well. Manchester United probably were a little shocked from the injury of Luke Shaw, this happens in football and hopefully the club can get back to winning ways in the Premier League in the weekend.

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