Manchester United legend Paul Scholes has described his old club’s poor defending against Istanbul Basaksehir as reminiscent of Under-10s.
It’s fair to say the former Red Devils midfielder was thoroughly unimpressed with United’s display in Turkey, where they suffered a surprise 2-1 defeat.
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United were also poor in the Premier League last weekend as they lost 1-0 at home to Arsenal, but they had made a strong start in the Champions League this season by beating Paris Saint-Germain and RB Leipzig in their first two group games.
They undid much of that fine work against Istanbul Basaksehir, however, and Scholes slammed the quality of the defending on display.
“Surely you always have someone back on the halfway line, they’re pointing at Matic. You’re always goalside, it’s like Under 10’s football,” Scholes told BT Sport, as quoted by talkSPORT.
“You can understand if it’s last minute but it’s the first ten minutes, it’s embarrassing.”
Manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer attempted to explain what went wrong on that Demba Ba goal, but we’re not sure Man Utd fans will be convinced at all by the Norwegian’s analysis of the situation.
“We were playing a short corner and everyone forgets to get back with the players they’re playing against and Demba Ba snuck in behind us,” Solskjaer said, as quoted by the Metro.
“Lack of communication and lack of good decisions, you don’t really see those goals at this level.
“We shouldn’t concede easy goals like this, we know how hard it is to create goals and create chances and when you give easy soft goals like the two we have done today it makes it hard.
“Obviously, it’s not a goal you normally concede. We’ve not done our duties and roles there that’s my responsibility we were going to play a short corner but we forgot our defending duties after we played a couple of short passes.”
Solskjaer will surely be feeling the pressure after a poor start to the season and it remains to be seen how much longer the club will be prepared to stick with him for.