United nowhere near good enough in Midtjylland humbling, fumes Carrick

A disconsolate Michael Carrick was left furious with Manchester United’s performance in their 2-1 Europa League defeat to Midtjylland.

Memphis Depay gave Louis van Gaal’s side a first-half lead in the first leg of the last-32 tie, but goals from Pione Sisto and Ebere Paul Onuachu secured a surprising yet deserved victory for the Danish champions on home soil.

Carrick has challenged his team-mates to overturn the deficit at Old Trafford next Thursday in order to keep their hopes of lifting the trophy alive and restore some belief to an injury-ravaged side that has won just two of their last six matches.

“It’s nowhere near good enough, it’s got to be a lot better,” the midfielder told BT Sport.

“We caused a lot of our own problems but we scored a good goal. It’s just not good enough, we haven’t played well enough, we didn’t kick on after we scored. We should’ve won that. We’re going home very disappointed.

“That’s the only positive we can take – that we’ve got another chance to put it right and go through. It’s not going to be easy but we still fancy our chances to go through. But we’ve given ourselves a tougher job than we’d hoped.

“We’ve got to give everything, we want to go further in this competition and get some sort of belief and momentum back and start winning games.”