Ten Hag slams Man Utd after Sevilla defeat: 'They had more passion, more desire, more will'

Erik ten Hag has slammed Manchester United's 'passion, desire and will' after their Europa League quarter-final exit to Sevilla.

United, who scored two late own goals in the first leg last week to leave the game at 2-2, produced another desperate defensive display as they went down 5-2 on aggregate to Roman Sanchez Pizjuan.

Once again Ten Hag's side provided Sevilla with two goals with Youssef En-Nesyri helping himself to a brace after errors from Harry Maguire and David de Gea.

United were without several key players, including suspended Bruno Fernandes and injured Lisandro Martinez and Raphael Varane, but Ten Hag insisted that was no excuse for the visitors' display.< /p>

"We have to do better, that's the request. We weren't calm, not calm," he told BT Sport. "We didn't beat the press; when you do , there are so many spaces behind it, and it was obvious at first how to do it.

"We lost the battles, they had more passion, more desire, more will. It's hard to win games.

"It's about the players on the pitch. They have to perform, I believe in them and trust them, but they have to show it, and they weren't good enough.

"We showed good things many times, but tonight we weren't ready for the game. At this level, playing for Manchester United, you have to be ready for every game.

"It was a great opportunity, a great opportunity, to win something, and we gave it away - we have to blame ourselves.

"It's on, we can't change it. We have to look forward to Sunday [against Brighton and Hove Albion in the FA Cup semi-finals], that's the next opportunity."

Christian Eriksen also admitted that United were out of the races as they wasted the chance to return to the semi-finals for the third time in four seasons.

"A lot happened. We didn't really give them a game from the first minute, and we gave them a lot of chances to finish us off," said the midfielder.

"We lost some of our composure, we made more mistakes than usual and the whole team couldn't make up for the mistakes made by our teammates.

"If you give away goals like we did, you lose, it has nothing to do with the atmosphere. Our own game wasn't strong enough. That's football, sometimes you have good days, sometimes you have bad days, and this was a bad day.

"All football players make mistakes, they punished us straight away. That's how you bounce back, and today we weren't strong enough to bounce back from our mistakes."< /p>