Paul Parker: Manchester United's Fred was completely stupid but ref should not have sent him off

Manchester United were lacking creativity, which was at the heart of their struggles against Paris Saint-Germain last night. As bad as their central defence is, they need to set themselves up to be consistently better in attack.

Anthony Martial had a few chances but they didn’t have the same flow as they did against Southampton, when they came back from 2-0 down to triumph 3-2 with a late comeback. Everything is so reliant on Bruno Fernandes.

If you have the opportunity in games of high magnitude, you need to have better players on the pitch, and Donny van de Beek should have been starting. They should not be playing Fred as well as one of Scott McTominay and Nemanja Matic. I think you can improve on one of those three, and Van de Beek should be starting. It costs them in attack too often.

In Edinson Cavani, you can see the frustration. I wonder if the people who play with him are on the same wavelength. I think Rashford is an individual on the pitch, and there are questions over whether they will ever get consistency from Martial. That hurts Cavani, who is an out-and-out striker.

If you have Van de Beek on the pitch then you have to have Fred and Cavani. In a high tempo game, that pace suits Fred. He can use the ball quicker and doesn’t need to be too intricate. By including Van de Beek it makes it easier on the team to pass through the pitch because he finds space.

Then, the other two midfielders can get up and down. To have an extra holding player, two defensive players in a double pivot, is a waste. But United don’t need two holding players, especially if that’s McTominay and Matic, because the pair of them are too slow. It makes everything too ponderous, which has been the problem with the side, at least since Louis van Gaal was in charge. The teams winning at the moment are the ones who are playing at a high pace. That’s nothing like United at the moment.

This leads me to question if Ole Gunnar Solskjaer knows his best eleven. It was very important to at least get a point last night, and you shouldn’t sit back and hope, you should go out and win the game. They don’t have a defence good enough to sit back, they aren’t clever enough to do that.

It’s about taking the game to the opposition as they did against Southampton. When they do that, there’s something there because they have enough pace. I think with the players he has, he has to be positive.

He took a conscious decision to not send him off for the first offence, but why did he not look at the decision that he sent Fred off for? If he was trying to balance it out, that’s wrong. He should have gone to the TV to see if he’d got the ball.

If Fred had made that tackle and the ref had done his job properly, then there would have been time to sub him off. If they’d drawn that game I don’t think anything would have been said about it. When it comes to Solskjaer, people are looking at every little point to pick him up on.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.