IT’S ALL OVER
Out of Champions League and who knows when they will be back? For Moyes and United. . .
MANCHESTER United boss David Moyes’ season of misery came to a bitter end last night with a Champions League exit.
The Old Trafford giants wi l l now finish this campaign without a trophy for only the second time in a decade and wi t h no Champions League football to look forward to for the foreseeable future.
And yet for a glorious minute, Moyes was dreaming of eliminating the European champions in this quarter-final after Patrice Evra’s stunning left-foot thunderbolt i n the 57th minute put United ahead.
But with the United bench
still celebrating, Mario Mandzukic got the better of Evra to head in a Franck Ribery cross and level. Pep Guardiola’s Bayern then took control and further goals from Thomas Muller and Arjen Robben sealed a semi-final place for the Germans. Moyes admitted that his team had made the ‘schoolboy’ error of switching off after taking the lead. ‘It probably went wrong 30 seconds after we scored,’ he told Sky Sports. ‘If you’re a schoolboy, you’re told: “Don’t concede after you score”. From the kick-off they went up the pitch and scored. ‘We needed five or 10 minutes to compose ourselves. ‘The players didn’t do an awful lot wrong tonight. They played really well but it was just a couple of small errors that cost us in the end. ‘I think we had a great chance at 2-1 (on aggregate), the third goal comes from two deflections. ‘I never thought we were out of the game and I thought we had a chance, I thought there was a bit of bad luck in the third goal. ‘We’ve not got Champions League football, which is disappointing but the focus now is that we get a team ready to get back in there. ‘It’s a great competition, we’ve really enjoyed it and we need to get back in it. My focus is getting a side together that gets us back into the Champions League.’ Michael Carrick promised that United would make a swift return to Europe’s premier tournament after this defeat all but confirmed they will miss the competition for the first time since the 1995-96 season next year. ‘Obviously it’s not good enough,’ said the midfielder. ‘We’ve said that over the last few weeks. It’s not good enough because this club should be in the Champions League. ‘It was always going to be tough tonight, but the reason we’re not in the Champions League is not because of tonight, it’s our league form over the season and we take responsibility for that. ‘It’s been over a period that we’ve had too many bad results and, ultimately, we pay for it. ‘I don’t think there will be a knock-on effect. We’ll pick ourselves up as well as we can and come back next season believing we can challenge for the title again. ‘This is where we want to be. This is where we’ve been for a long time and we’ll be back here in the not too distant future.’ Reflecting on the fact United conceded immediately after Evra gave them the breakthrough, Carrick said: ‘We’re really disappointed because we put ourself in a great position, but it’s 20-odd seconds I think (before they equalise). ‘That’s a big blow for us. We were still in it and we had a great chance when Danny Welbeck laid it off to Wayne (Rooney), I don’t know if it bobbled up or what, but it was a big one for us. We defended so well for long periods. At times all it takes is something to drop for them and in the end it did.’ United’s chief tormentor Robben said: ‘I think our first half was okay, we created some chances but we started badly in the second half and were punished. ‘It was good to score the equaliser that quickly. ‘Then we added two more and ended it. That’s football. Our coach warned us. Nil-nil is OK but we wanted to win, the first 10 minutes after the break was a catastrophe.’