CALAMITY JONES
Defender’s own goal ends hopes of top spot
JOSE MOURINHO thought the result at the Mestalla would not matter last night. Turns out the Manchester United manager was wrong.
Juventus’s surprise defeat to Young Boys in Switzerland meant that United’s failure to win cost them first place in Group H and, most likely, a more favourable last-16 draw on Monday.
Instead, Mourinho made eight changes in the belief that the outcome would be irrelevant and saw United well beaten by a Valencia team who can count themselves unfortunate to be dropping into the Europa League.
That was decided before kick-off. But even if Mourinho had given up on first place, he was still looking for a performance from his players and simply did not get one.
Paul Pogba, benched for three of the previous five games, started and did nothing to justify keeping his place for Sunday’s trip to Liverpool — not least when he was guilty of an astonishing miss from close range in the first half. An assistant’s flag spared the Frenchman’s embarrassment but replays showed that he was onside.
Phil Jones will not remember this night too fondly either. His header preceded Carlos Soler’s opening goal in the first half and Jones calamitously scored the second in his own net soon after half-time.
But there were poor performances throughout this United team. So much so that a frustrated Mourinho reluctantly sent on Marcus Rashford, Jesse Lingard and Ashley Young in the second half when he would rather have rested them for Liverpool, and the three substitutes fashioned another late goal in Europe.
Ultimately, it was the added-time efforts against Juventus and Young Boys that have seen United through to the knockout stage, but no one is pretending this has been an impressive campaign. It is amazing to think it could have ended with them pipping Juventus but they blew that chance.
Did Mourinho have any regrets over his team selection? Apparently not. ‘I think that to qualify in this group is a success, never a failure,’ he said.
‘Before the game I told the players that if we won and Juventus won, we did our job. If we didn’t win and Juventus didn’t win, we can blame ourselves. I don’t think that finishing first or second, the draw will be significantly different, apart from a couple of clubs that are clearly better than the others.’
Asked if he had any regrets about his team selection, Mourinho replied: ‘Chris Smalling is injured, Victor Lindelof is injured, Matteo Darmian is injured, Anthony Martial is injured, Diogo Dalot is injured. The only two players I could bring and didn’t were David de Gea and Nemanja Matic.
‘But I didn’t learn anything from this game. Nothing that happened surprised me at all. My team improved when I made the changes I didn’t want to make, which is a little bit of frustration because I didn’t want to play the three players I played in the second half.’
By that stage United were two goals down to a Valencia side languishing in 15th place in La Liga and also showing eight changes as they prioritised a more important fixture this weekend.
They tore United apart down the right flank in the first half and that produced their opening goal in the 17th minute when the excellent Cristiano Piccini played in Santi Mina. His cross was headed clear by Jones but it only reached Soler just inside the box and he drilled a low shot into the bottom corner. For the 10th time in 15 games, United had conceded first.
It took them nearly half an hour to threaten when Juan Mata’s volley against his old club was deflected but Valencia had several chances to extend their lead before they scored again within two minutes of the restart.
Jones galloped after Soler’s through-ball under pressure from on-loan Chelsea striker Michy Batshuayi. He must have seen that Romero was coming off his line as he slid in to prod the ball back to him but steered it beyond the goalkeeper and into his own net.
Rashford headed home from Young’s cross in the 87th minute after good work by Lingard and they did their best to salvage a draw. But even that would not have been enough for United to leapfrog Juventus — and they did not deserve one anyway.