CENTRE BACKS HOLD THEIR HANDS UP

Last updated : 31 October 2002 By newshound

Rio:

"We have no excuses. We are big enough to accept that we lost," he said.

"It hurts. You don't want to lose any game. You don't want to lose in training let alone a proper match.

"Any side losing players of the calibre we have had missing will suffer but that's not to take anything away from the players who played.

"And while everybody is talking about a weakened squad that's no excuse. We are Manchester United and we should have the ability to beat anybody with any side we put out.

"The fact is we didn't play very well. We didn't create many chances and it couldn't have been a wonderful game to watch.

"The chances we did create we didn't capitalise on

O’Shea:

"The way the game started off we looked pretty confident and we wanted to dominate the whole ninety minutes. We couldn't make our early possession pay, though.

"To be fair their first two strikes were good goals, but we could have cut them out a bit earlier. I could have done better on both occasions. You have to learn from these occasions.

"We're still top of the group and we can win the group against Leverkusen in a fortnight."