Manchester United suddenly lost against Astana 1-2 score in the fifth round of the Europa League group stage.
Manchester United made Astana’s away match in a procedural match. By coach Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s team had tickets to the knockout round. While representatives of Kazakhstan was officially eliminated.
Perhaps due to the nature of the match, Solskjaer arranged a squad of many young or reserve players. Only three familiar faces in the squad are Jesse Lingard, Luke Shaw and Mason Greenwood.
It took only 10 minutes for Man United to have his first goal when Jesse Lingard scored the day he took the captain’s armband. The 26-year-old striker has undergone very low performance and is the focus of criticism from fans and experts.
A few minutes later, Lingard almost doubled the gap when he launched a shot at a distance of about 20 meters, but the ball went off the post.
The lack of concentration in the M.U defense was shown in the first half with the unfocused situation of Luke Shaw. He did not actively cut the ball, sending Abzal Beysebekov’s pass to Dorin Rotariu’s position. But fortunately for Man United he could not get the ball into the goalie keeper Lee Grant.
Entering the second half, Astana played more actively and the game became more open with tit-for-tat action of the two teams. The first was Evgeny Postnikov’s crossbar on the side of Astana.
And then the young Manchester United defender Bernard almost “netted home” from the dangerous situation of Dorin Rotariu. The evolutions, together with a rather sloppy situation that took the ball away from Ivan Maevski’s goal, signaled a difficult half for the visitors.
It would have been better for the students of coach Ole Gunnar Solskjaer to have a better score. If Tahith Chong did not miss the ten-minute opportunity in the 54th minute. The city was almost empty, Chong cushioned the ball into the sky in a daze of his teammates.
Almost immediately the visitors paid the price when Dimitri Shomko made a decisive finish to defeat Bernard and goalkeeper Lee Grant.
Just six minutes later, Di’Shon Bernard had a setback when he tried to clear the ball in a situation that came in from the attacking player. Sigurjonsson had a chance to increase the lead to 3-1 after 70 minutes, but Rotariu’s shot from the cross went harmlessly.