A Swiss Miss

Basel 2-1 United. For the second time in as many weeks, Manchester United have exited a competition. But where the prior was the rather insignificant Carling Cup, this is the Champions League. For the first time in years, United will not progress beyond the group stage. I'm fairly shocked. True, the team hasn't been in its best form, but I thought we were made of sterner stuff. I knew this match would be tough. Basel have looked good throughout the group stage, and I was not relishing playing them on their own pitch.
The first half saw United go a goal down in the 9th minute as Basel popped one in from short range. United poured it on from that point and looked certain to score, given the amount of pressure and number of chances being created. It was not to be, however, as the hosts doubled their lead late on. Phil Jones pulled one back for United to give us hope of a late comeback, but it wasn't in the cards. To pour salt on the wound, Nemanja Vidic left the match in the first half with a nasty looking knee injury. It was just a poor outing overall.
If there's an upside to this whole thing, it's that we can now focus on domestic games. We need to step things up in the league, and we've still got the FA Cup forthcoming. Hopefully having to compete on one less (very strenuous) front will help, but it doesn't make our exit form the competition any easier to take. At least there's the consolation of City not progressing either, I guess. But they've got inexperience to blame; We just flat out weren't good enough. We must move on though. We're at home to Wolves on Saturday, so hopefully the lads can turn in a good performance and we can get some mojo back. Fuckin' hell I hope so.