Sir Alex Ferguson admits his Manchester United players were ‘caught napping’ as Demba Ba’s wonder-strike sent Chelsea through to the FA Cup semi-finals.
was enough to separate the sides in today’s replay at Stamford Bridge, with the Blues now set to face Manchester City at Wembley in two weeks.
And Ferguson admits his defence were caught out by Juan Mata’s pass which was expertly tucked away by Ba after 49 minutes.
‘We were comfortable in the first half and I couldn’t see them getting into the game or being any great threat to us. But the goal, as it always does, changed the game,’ he said.
‘We spoke about Ba and the experience we had with him a couple of years ago at Newcastle when he scored exactly the same type of goal. We were caught napping, to be honest. It wasn’t a good start for us right at the beginning of the second half.’
The visitors had chances to equalise through substitute Robin van Persie and Javier Hernandez, who was denied by a stunning save from Petr Cech, but Ferguson admitted his side just couldn’t find the cutting edge to bring the scores level.
‘After that [Ba’s goal] I think we lacked the composure to win the game and create proper openings. We had a lot of possession but didn’t make the best use of it and they caused us quite a few problems on the counter-attack,’ added the Scot.
‘Fortunately we didn’t lose another goal, but I couldn’t really see us scoring either.’
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