PLAYERS VIEWS ON STUTTGART

Last updated : 03 October 2003 By Editor
Van Nistelrooy:

"We know what went wrong and we know that next time we will
do things better. We made a few mistakes and Stuttgart
punished us but you have to give them credit because they
are a good side. We have to move on from here,

"The penalty was important for me because being 2-0 down I
knew if I could score then we would have a chance. But we
made a few mistakes and they punished us. Rangers had a good
result in Athens and the group is open now. It is an
interesting group."

Roy Keane:

"Stuttgart are a young side but looking at the game you
would have thought they were the ones with all the European
experience. We gave two bad goals away and started the
second half very sluggishly.

"But we have been down this road before and we are going to
have to accept the criticism. There are four games left and
hopefully we can put things right. People always talk about
other results but all we need to do is analyse our own game
and we weren't good enough.

"But football is never easy and every now and then in Europe
unless you are sharp you are going to come unstuck. Rangers
was always going to be a difficult game and it would have
been nice to go into that game on maximum points. We have
experienced this in Europe before and now we have to bounce
back."

Tim Howard:

"We didn't do too well at the back. We weren't as sharp as
we could have been and we all need to take the blame for
that.

"Now we need to knock Rangers down and get ourselves back
up. It was going to be important anyway but it is even more
so now.

"We have been playing well and we have been on good form. We
can't let one game throw us off."

Ryan Giggs:

“That makes it three successive away defeats in Europe but I
really wouldn’t read too much into that. We know we’re more
than capable of winning on the road in the Champions League
and we’re as confident as ever of getting a result anywhere.

“Whenever we lose, people want to dissect everything and
look for problems in the camp and often fail to give the
opposition the credit they deserve. I think the result has
made a few people realise the group will not be the walkover
some had predicted. The result in Germany has just shown we
have a lot of work to do to qualify for the knockout stages.

“I actually thought we did pretty well in Stuttgart,
particularly in the first half, but we got caught by two
breakaway goals and paid the price. Of course we are
disappointed but Stuttgart are a good side and there’s no
need to panic.”