Manchester United only winning the Europa League this season would be a failure, says Paul Parker
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Updated 19/02/2021 at 11:49 GMT
Even if Manchester United were to win the Europa League this season, former club defender Paul Parker does not believe only that will be enough to keep the fans happy. United look to have lost out in the Premier League title race and Parker feels that winning the European competition would only go some way to keep the supporters satisfied. Domestic form also has to remain a priority...
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer
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We have seen already that United had a big win against RB Leipzig and that was in the Champions League. Then we saw they struggled and got knocked out in the return game.
I don’t think you can turn around after beating Sociedad and say ‘this is a turning point, this is wonderful’ because we know this season how unpredictable it can be domestically and on a European level.
Barcelona, Juventus, Napoli and Sevilla are all teams you would have expected to be doing well in Europe. People think Sevilla can win the Europa League at the click of a finger but they then play in the Champions League and it's going wrong for them.
United have done well to beat Sociedad so convincingly but once you get past this round it gets harder.
Maybe in theory as a competition the Europa League is harder to win than the Champions League, because of the travelling and playing teams motivated to win it having missed out on their own league titles. It’s a difficult competition and there are big clubs in there.
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If United can get to another semi-final I think they’ve done fantastically. It will be interesting to see whether they have the capacity go on and win one of the two competitions [the FA Cup] everyone thinks they still have a chance of doing.
Winning the Europa League would keep the fans happy but I think they still need a good performance in the league. There’s no point falling away in the league just to go and win the Europa League.
It is Manchester United after all. Ending up in a Europa League position is deemed not good enough even though you’d qualify for the Champions League by winning it.
It wouldn’t be good for fans who support Manchester City. Liverpool wouldn’t accept it either. They are three clubs who you talk about winning the Premier League.
Just winning the Europa League would be deemed a failure.
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