why did we mess up in europe?

All of the above. European football is getting better while the Premiership over the past couple of seasons has seen even the big clubs struggling. Take away Rooney, Nani and Vidic (Scholes was still retired when we played in Europe) and our squad is very average. Injuries certainly didn't help our cause, but we definitely underestimated the so called smaller teams. Add in some poor tactical decisions coupled with some woeful defending and we deservedly crash out of both European competitions.

take your pick from a combination of injuries, baffling team selections, underestimating inferior opposition, forgetting how to defend at home to basel, forgetting how to score away to basel and conceding two wholy avoidable goals at home to benfica.

I am soo annoyed right

so annoyed that you can't finish a sentence?!

I don't care as long as we win the league

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To be honest I agree with CP. If we win the league it will be a great season. For the last couple of seasons we've been on the edge of failure due to lack of investment/team tinkering/arrogance. I thought it would take us missing out on the league for us to learn our lesson. It looks like Europe will be the lesson though and Fergie won't let this happen again, hopefully. The positive is we haven't had to lose the league to learn this lesson.

I know this may sound harsh but once giggs plays less games in the knockout stage were you need to track back. Against barcelona I wanted him off even after his assist as I knew that if he kept playing we might as well not bother.

If you watch the champions league final you will see how many times he let players go past him, not putting in a tackle. If we had someone like owen hargreaves or fletcher at there best we could have combated this. Barca play a simple game pass pass until the opposition have to retreat and make sure when they lose it they have 3 or 4 players surrounded the player with the ball. They make it look easy as most of the time they are playing in half a pitch as they have a high line.

Man utd letting giggs play was a big mistake in my opinion.

Look at our 2008 cl semi final team or the 2011 pre season team against barcelona which we beat them 2-1 and I believe barca had there 1st shot on target in the 60th minute. This type of team would have competed far better.

If jose mourinho was in charge he would have flooded the midfield with defensive plahers and defence and probably had nani and valencia and rooney playing.

The only way we were going to beat them was with pace and power and a solid defensive base. Looked at the real madrid team last years semi's, they more then held there own and barca get better as the tournament games increase.

Whats more frustrating is we could have been playing barca in the semi's this year if we could hit a barn door in the group stages.

Every year people say that Utd are finished and that the squad is not good enough and every bloody year you prove those people wrong.

The squad is not good enough for Europe and Fergie will need to buy in the summer, Scholes and Giggs can't last forever.

To continue to dominate as you have and to be able to compete in Europe money needs to be spent.

It will be interesting to see who you buy in the summer. Of course I hope they whoever they are they are all crap.