Christian Eriksen reveals reasons behind Man Utd's humiliation by Sevilla
By Sean Walsh
Manchester United midfielder Christian Eriksen has said he and his teammates only have themselves to blame after being dumped out of the UEFA Europa League by Sevilla, playing down suggestions they crumbled in a hostile atmosphere.
The Red Devils had comfortably led 2-0 in last week's quarter-final first leg at Old Trafford, but twice put the ball in their own net late on to level the tie heading to Spain.
Erik ten Hag's men endured a nightmare at the Estadio Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan. Lapses in concentration from David de Gea and Harry Maguire allowed Sevilla's Youssef En-Nesyri to score a gift-wrapped opener, before some hesitancy from the goalkeeper saw him lobbed by Loic Bade's header.
A testing night for United concluded when De Gea lost control of a high ball over the top and allow En-Nesyri another easy finish, with Sevilla winning 3-0 on the night and 5-2 on aggregate.
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Speaking to BT Sport post-match, Eriksen tried to explain why United were on the receiving end of such a humiliating scoreline.
"A lot of things happened. We didn't really get in the game from the first minute. I think we tried, but today, we gave them a lot of opportunities to finish us off. I think we lost a bit of coolness in the build-up," the Dane said.
"They were high pressure and we didn't deal well with that. I think we made more mistakes than we normally do and personally or not, I think the whole team today, we couldn't catch up on the mistakes the team made.
"I don't think it's anything with that [the atmosphere], take away where we play, if we give away goals as we did today, we'll lose. It's nothing to do with the atmosphere, I just think our own game was not strong enough.
"I don't know why that was. It's football, sometimes you have good days, sometimes you have bad days and today was one of those. We tried to do everything we could to avoid it, but we couldn't and we have a game in four days for revenge."
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On this edition of 90min's Definitive European Power Rankings, part of the 90min podcast network, Sean Walsh and Jack Gallagher discuss the top 10 teams from across the continent after a busy week of Champions League quarter-finals. If you can't see this embed, click here to listen to the podcast!