Manchester United’s under-19s had a disappointing day in the UEFA Youth League, falling to a 4-0 defeat against CSKA Moscow this afternoon.
A double from Timur Zhamaletdinov and goals from Aleksandr Makarov and Astemir Gordyushenko consigned the young Reds to defeat at the Stadium Oktyabr in Moscow.
Zhamaletdinov opened the scoring the 13th minute, calming dispatching a penalty into the bottom corner after Axel Tuanzebe had handball in the area. Despite Nicky Butt’s men improving as the first half went on, the Reds conceded another just before the break, as Makarov smashed home from the edge of the penalty area to make it two.
CSKA increased the lead minutes after the restart, with Zhamaletdinov scoring another penalty after right-back Tyrell Warren was penalised for handball in the area, and Gordyushenko rounded off the scoring in the 88th minute, beating his man inside the penalty area before coolly slotting the ball in the bottom corner past Dean Henderson.
After the game, U19s manager Butt spoke to MUTV about the result. He felt that the two penalties were harsh but admitted that the Army Men deserved all three points.
They deserved to win today. They were better than us at all aspects of the game but we feel that, when we are on form, we can compete against the best teams.
The result wasn’t great, obviously, and it wasn’t a great performance – it was very bad. We need to improve. It is a learning curve in this competition; it is difficult to get any time on the pitch but they need to play a lot better than that individually.
Man for man, they were better than us at all aspects. We have three games to rectify that and learn from it. We have had a good chat about it, spoke some honest words and said it is not good enough for Manchester United players.
You like to think you learn more from defeat. The question will answer itself in the next game we play. I don’t think we worked hard enough as a team, we made the wrong decisions individually and we conceded two penalties, which I don’t think were penalties, but you have to deal with that.
United XI:
Henderson, Reid, Warren, Tuanzebe, Hamilton; Fosu-Mensah, McTominay (Whelan 62), Kehinde; Dearnley (Diedrick-Roberts 64), Gribbin, Redmond.
Subs not used:
Dorrington, Boonen, Kenyon, Dunne, Sang.
