United’s decade of Champions League failure

When Manchester United boss Solskjaer so nobly took ownership of Tuesday’s loss, the question springs to mind whether the Norwegian is really cognizant of the more serious implications of the defeat to RB Leibzig – one which underscores the fact that he is now the first manager of a British club to lose six of his first 10 matches in the Champions League.

“We didn’t perform as a team well enough. We never got going,” he said. “That is the manager’s responsibility.”

In all fairness to him, the spotlight should not be trained so harshly on him alone as the Norwegian’s record is just a continuation of United’s persistent poor form in Europe since Sir Alex Ferguson departed the club.

Since finishing as runners-up in 2010-11 under the venerable Scot, who had the distinction of having previously won the tournament twice during his tenure at Old Trafford, the Red Devils had since then not even managed to scrape past the quarter-finals, last reaching that stage in 2018-19.

Significantly United’s win percentage in the Champions League pre- and post-Ferguson over the past seven seasons stand at 61.33% and 45.71%, respectively.

It would actually be easier to defend their failure to proceed from the Group stage to the knockout rounds in this current campaign than their earlier failure in 2014-15, when when they finished third behind Wolfsburg and PSV Eindhoven and also in 2011-12, when Benfica and Basel beat them to qualification.

But it remains a disappointment to a side that would have hoped to finish above one of RB Leipzig or Paris St-Germain, especially after beating both in their first two Group H games.

That being said, however, qualifying for the Europa League would obviously offer scant consolation at this crucial juncture after their immediate narrow loss to the Bundesliga team, although it does offer United another opportunity for European success in a competition they won four seasons ago.