De Gea and Maguire top the bill in an astonishing Man Utd disasterclass in Sevilla

As tone-setters go, David De Gea providing Harry Maguire with a hospital pass he inexplicably demanded, the Manchester United captain then being promptly mugged by Erik Lamela to allow Youssef En-Nesyri to put Sevilla ahead in the tie with just seven minutes on the clock takes some beating.

But really, United had set the tone for tonight with their clown-car collapse in the latter stages of the first leg at Old Trafford. Sevilla were absolutely brilliant here in a tournament that does things to them and with the relegation fears that have haunted them all season now pretty much gone but the utter paucity of United’s performance really was quite something.

There is mitigation in the list of those missing through injury and suspension, and also in United playing just about the most football possible in a season where that poses a uniquely difficult challenge. To a man they looked mentally and physically spent here in a performance riddled with poor decisions, poor technique and poor execution. But that mitigation cannot entirely excuse what happened here. Everyone’s tired, lads.

The five goals Sevilla scored without reply after United had sauntered into a 2-0 lead at Old Trafford last week really are an extraordinary bunch of rake-stepping calamities from United. Two own goals. A goal gifted in the early stages in front of a raucous crowd by a combination of De Gea’s lapse of judgement and Maguire’s understandable but misguided desire to Be Involved. An attempted header from a Nottingham Forest reject moments after half-time that instead somehow arced in slow-motion passed a leaden-footed United keeper and in. And then finally De Gea finding himself unable to decide between trapping the ball and hoofing it a million miles after charging out of his penalty area and instantly regretting it, doing neither of those things and instead just presenting the ball to En-Nesyri. United were the architects of their own downfall who then turned up to complete the building work as well.

And it really could have been so very many more. Sevilla’s general excellence and relentless press – on which note this game served as yet another reminder of just how much we miss Lamela’s unique brand of absurd and entirely one-footed nonsense in the Premier League – wasn’t quite matched by the composure of their finishing. So many times they were simply presented with the ball by a series of United errors. Minutes before half-time United had a huge escape when a…