Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal was disappointed with his teams performance in the 0-0 draw against PSV Eindhoven on Wednesday in the Champions League. The result leaves the Red Devilss chances of qualifying for the knockout stages in balance.
They will have to beat Wolfsburg on the final matchday to move into the next round of the elite European cup competition. The manager blamed his teams lack of proper finishing and the lack of impact made by his substitutions in the second half as the main reason for the stalemate with the Eredivisie side.
The Dutch manager was satisfied with his teams first-half performance but rued the lack of finishing by his team. He admitted that the second-half performance left much to be desired and was surprised the PSV did not take advantage and create more chances than they did. Jesse Lingard came closest to scoring a goal for the 20-times English champions but fired their best chance over the bar.
I think the first half was a reasonable performance. We have created three open chances and three other chances and we give only two chances away against a very defensive opponent. But then the second half was not great and I think it is a miracle that we didnt give chances away in the second half — only one, I believe, Van Gaal told Uniteds official site.
Van Gaal brought on Marouane Fellaini and Ashley Young just on the hour mark, while Juan Mata entered the fray in place of right-back Matteo Darmian in the 85th minute. The former Bayern Munich manager was disappointed with his substitutes and believes they failed to make the desired impact and bring home the three points, which would have ensured progress to the last 16 stage of the competition.
Our midfielders had to give an angle to our central defenders, to Daley Blind and Chris Smalling, because they were playing against one striker, De Jong. So in the first half that was not always the case but in the second half this happened less in spite of my changes.
Normally when I change it goes better but today it was not like that, so I was also very disappointed that my changes didnt give an improvement. I thought that with this line-up, we had the best chance to win and you never know whether that would have happened if Mata had played from beginning, the Red Devils boss explained.
