Paul Scholes rips into ‘upbeat’ Eriksen after a comedy of errors see Man Utd crash out of the Europa League
Paul Scholes has ripped into Manchester United midfielder Christian Eriksen for being ‘too upbeat’ after crashing out of the Europa League.
The Red Devils were beaten 3-0 by Sevilla in the quarter-finals on Thursday after a series of calamitous errors from Harry Maguire and David de Gea sealed their fate.
Eriksen was asked to give his thoughts following the defeat but Scholes was left bemused by the Dane’s positive demeanour.
Speaking to BT Sport after the game, Eriksen said: “We lost a bit of our coolness, we made more mistakes than we do usually and the whole team could not catch up with mistakes our team-mates made.
“If you give away goals like we did, you lose,” he added.
“It’s nothing to do with the atmosphere. Our own game was not strong enough. ”
“It’s football, sometimes you have good days, sometimes you have bad days and it was a bad day. Luckily we have a game in four days.
“Every football player makes mistakes, they punished us straight away.”
“It’s how we bounce back and today we were not strong enough to bounce back from the mistakes.”
Embarrassing errors cost Man Utd
As mentioned, it was a series of woeful errors that ultimately saw Man Utd crash out of the Europa League, missing out on the chance to win a second major trophy this season.
In the first leg, Erik ten Hag’s team put in a dominant performance and led the tie by two goals until the 81st minute, until own goals from Tyrell Malacia and Maguire made it 2-2.
Then, they got off to the worst possible start in the return leg on Thursday with Maguire (once again) buckling under pressure and gifting Youssef En-Nesyri a golden opportunity to make it 1-0.
Sevilla then doubled their advantage through Loic Bade, before En-Nesyri pounced on an embarrassing mistake from De Gea to make it 3-0 on the night and 5-2 on aggregate.
This leaves Man Utd with just the FA Cup to play for in terms of trophies, while they still have a fight on their hands to qualify for the Champions League next season.
Scholes criticises ‘upbeat’ Eriksen
In Scholes’ post-match analysis, the Man Utd icon was quick to point out Eriksen’s inexplicably positive attitude.
“He looks quite upbeat there, Christian [Eriksen]. I have no idea why,” Scholes said.
Given he won 25 major trophies during his time at Old Trafford, it’s not difficult to understand why Scholes would be less than pleased with Eriksen’s response.
One can only imagine what Sir Alex Ferguson’s reaction would have been to Maguire and De Gea’s performance, so it will be interesting to see how Ten Hag responds ahead of their FA Cup semi-final against Brighton on Sunday.
Maguire will be suspended for the game after accumulating too many red cards, and with Raphael Varane and Lisandro Martinez currently sidelined with injuries.
Now, the Dutch coach could be forced to play a back four of Diogo Dalot, Luke Shaw (at centre-back), Victor Lindelof and Aaron Wan Bissaka.
The big question will be whether Ten Hag decides to stick with De Gea and with Tom Heaton currently injured, Jack Butland could be called upon to make his debut against Brighton.
