“We were well beaten, basically,” the manager said in his post-match press conference. “I thought they attacked better than we did, they defended the few attacks we were able to mount quite comfortably and as a result unfortunately when that happens you tend to be looking at one possible result and that’s the result that came up with.
“I thought the only part of game that was quite good was that we weren’t making it too easy for them to play through us, which of course is something which you have to do.
“There aren’t many teams in Premier League where you can come away from home and, if you allow them to play through, you’re going to come away with a good result.
“The way the game panned out, United had almost complete control for so many long spells of game, and until those two chances in the second-half I don’t think we worried them nearly enough.”
Hodgson reiterated that his players must now reset and fix their sights on revenge in the Premier League this weekend.
“The fact is, we set out our stall as we thought in the right way to confront this game,” he said. “We are going to have to set out our stall in a very similar way to confront the next game.
“We don’t have a lot of changes we can possibly make. We are facing a similar scenario, potentially, that we faced tonight. We don’t have a number of people available that can make such a vast difference to our own team.
