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Marc Skinner called for more investment in experienced players from Manchester United in order for his team to push on, after they succumbed to two late Bayern Munich goals and were knocked out in the Women’s Champions League quarter-finals despite a spirited, second-leg performance.
Skinner’s team led on the night for 70 minutes after Melvine Malard’s opener but Bayern built up a heavy spell of pressure in the second half and eventually found a way through United’s dogged resistance. Glódís Viggósdóttir’s header from a corner and Linda Dallmann’s sweetly struck half-volley gave the runaway Bundesliga leaders a 5-3 aggregate victory.
The game came on the same day that the Football Association revealed that six Women’s Super League clubs spent more on agents fees that United in the year to February 2026, after the Guardian reported that United’s wage bill last season was only half that of their rivals Arsenal. Asked about those numbers and what is needed for United to kick on, Skinner said: “We need to design the squad with that depth of experience in order to go to that stage, if that’s what we want to do.
“When we have eight players out currently, we just couldn’t compete enough in that second half. If we’d had them, I honestly think we could have gone through tonight, that’s how well we played in the first half.”
Asked about expectations surrounding his team, Skinner said: “I think we will learn from what investment is really needed to go into this level of competition for consistent years. We’re still learning as a club, of course, we are. I’m incredibly proud of what my players are doing on resources we have. But if we want to compete at this latter stage, we’ve seen what we’ve got to do, as a club. And then it’s our choice now, isn’t it? We have to look at what we seriously want to achieve and we’ll learn and grow from it. Even as a club, we’re still learning.
“It takes, sometimes, a punch in the face to wake up.”
The decisive blows in this tie was struck inside the final nine minutes in Munich, but perhaps the damage was done in the first leg. Trailing 3-2 from last week’s first leg at Old Trafford, United always faced an uphill task but they gave themselves hope with one of their best performance in recent weeks, but Bayern, backed by a vibrant 25,000-strong crowd, never trailed on aggregate across the entire tie and there was an air of inevitability about their late breakthrough.
After Saturday’s disappointing display in a 3-0 loss to Manchester City, and specifically how low on energy and intensity the United players looked for large parts of that game, the travelling fans will have likely arrived in Munich with low expectations. Their squad is shallow after injuries to senior players including Ella Toone, Dominique Janssen and the striker Elisabeth Terland. They will have been pleasantly surprised, then, to see their team produce an exceptional first-half display full of belief, energy and bravery in attack.
Malard forced Ena Mahmutovic into a sharp save at her near post, in a spell of dominance for the confident away side. Later in the first half, Malard would test Mahmutovic again with a well-struck, bouncing effort from just outside the area, but by then she had already opened the scoring. The striker gratefully capitalised on a mistake from Mahmutovic who got in the way of Vanessa Gilles when trying to clear and the ball rolled into Malard’s path for her to turn the ball home.
At the other end, Millie Turner’s blocks, a Gilles header wide from a corner and a tame header wide from Pernille Harder ensured that United reached the break with the aggregate score level at 3-3. United sat much deeper in the second half, though, and Bayern forced corner after corner, with two unsuccessful penalty appeals for handball, before their captain headed in and the stadium roared with relief.
“I thought the team were incredible, especially first half, and then the tiredness and fatigue set in,” Skinner said. “I think Bayern rested seven players at the weekend, and it told in the second half. In the second half, we couldn’t do the same things we wanted to do. Freshness in the end was the key difference.”
United’s elimination leaves them needing to finish in the Women’s Super League’s top three to qualify for this competition next season, which looks like a very tricky task. They are fourth and have difficult away games to come against Tottenham and Chelsea.
