Erik Ten Hag accused his Manchester United flops of an "unacceptable" performance as their Europa League campaign came to an embarrassing end.
United skipper Harry Maguire and goalkeeper David De Gea made humiliating blunders as six-time winners Sevilla knocked out Ten Hag's side. Ten Hag was in no mood to spare his woeful players and said they had let themselves, the club and their fans down with their dismal display, the sixth season in a row United have gone out of Europe to Spanish opposition.
"Tonight we were not good enough," said Ten Hag. "That was obvious. We did not match the standards you can expect from a Manchester United team.
"I have to acknowledge, it's the truth, it's hard, it's tough, but it's the truth. It's unacceptable. We have to be better. It's not about playing skills, it's about character. Sevilla had more willingness to win - it can't be like that.
"Everyone can see the demands and the standard has to be higher in a club like Manchester United. We have to face the fact that we let ourselves down, we let the fans down. If you want to win trophies, if you want to be successful, you need character.
"They had more passion, more desire, more willingness. With that it's difficult to win games."
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Ten Hag must now try to lift his players for Sunday's FA Cup semi-final against Brighton at Wembley. Manchester City face Sheffield United in the other semi-final, with Pep Guardiola's side in the hunt to win a Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League treble. The last team to achieve that feat was Sir Alex Ferguson's United in 1999.
"We can't run away from it," said Ten Hag. "On Sunday we have another opportunity and we have to step up and show more character and personality.
"This was a great opportunity, a great occasion to win something and we gave it away - we have to blame ourselves. It's gone, we can't change it. We have to look forward to Sunday, that's the next opportunity."
United midfielder Christian Eriksen said: "We didn't really give them a game from the first minute and gave them a lot of opportunities to finish us off. We lost a bit of our coolness, we made more mistakes than we do usually and the whole team could not catch up with mistakes our team-mates made."
Some United players will be fearing the chop after Thursday night's game. Paul Scholes told BT Sport: "I think tonight has made Ten Hag's mind up on a few of these players. That is probably the only good thing that will come out of this.
"This shows the squad isn't good enough, if you have injuries. This squad can handle other games but when it comes to the crunch, the big atmosphere, it falls short. The quality drops a level when the big players aren't fit."
