Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson admitted his young players still have plenty to learn after their 1-0 Champions League defeat to Besiktas at Old Trafford.
Ferguson told ITV1: “I think we were a bit anxious but it’s not a bad thing – they’re young and you expect them to make mistakes.
“It was a stellar performance in terms of the flow of the game. We’ve shown some really good things tonight and that’s encouraging but at the end of the day we just didn’t get the result we needed.”
But Ferguson insisted he would have no qualms about repeating the inexperienced line-up for the trip to Wolfsburg in the final group game.
“We’ll see how our programme is going at the time but I’d be confident in these players,” Ferguson added, before claiming United were denied a clear penalty when Patrice Evra was downed in the area.
“It’s a penalty kick – that’s two games in a row they have denied us stonewall penalties but what can you do about it?” he said. “In the second half they (Besiktas) went very defensive, they stopped the game and played out time. It’s difficult for young players to understand that, but it’s a good experience for them.”
Besiktas coach Mustafa Denizli could not hide his delight at ending United’s eight-year unbeaten home run in the Champions League group stages.
“The whole world knows how big a team United is at Old Trafford, so we are very pleased with this result,” he said. “We came here with only one aim, and that was to win as we want to continue our journey in Europe.
“It is a very good night for Besiktas and Turkish football in general. I believe in this team but we need to win our next game in the group as well.”
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