Battered and beleaguered, Manchester United emerged from an extraordinary night with their noses bloodied and their armoury beginning to rust. Alex Ferguson took a wild gamble here and it misfired badly.
How serious the ramifications will be remains to be seen, but United's Champions League group is becoming too tight for comfort. For that, a certain amount of criticism must be levelled at Ferguson. The United manager fielded the sort of team he usually reserves for League Cup duty and, if he was culpable of underestimating PSV, it was a crass error. United were a goal to the good courtesy of Paul Scholes's penalty after only two minutes, but were then completely overwhelmed by the irrepressible Dutch champions.
While United have found goals easy to come by on domestic duty, they had failed to score in four of their previous five away games in Europe. Not quite a drought but, by their heady standards, a dry spell all the same.
The onus here fell on Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Dwight Yorke, although if the latter was hoping his stand-off with Ferguson could be eased by one performance he was mistaken. For long spells of a pulsating night in the Philips stadium, Yorke was a peripheral figure.
Solskjaer has a few hard luck stories of his own, of course, having remained on the fringes of United's first team despite an extraordinary scoring record, and the talismanic Norwegian made his first contribution of the evening within 90 seconds of the kick-off.
A suicidal crossfield ball by Jan Heintze sold his team-mates short and Solskjaer, predatory as ever, was on the loose ball and away at goal. His first touch was too strong but the second nudged the ball away from Ronald Waterreus, and as the goalkeeper rushed off his line his momentum carried him into Solskjaer for a clear penalty. Yorke, somewhat intriguingly, handed the responsibility to Scholes, whose finish from 12 yards was emphatic.
The early breakthrough clearly rattled PSV and Yorke should have doubled United's lead a few minutes later, screwing his shot wide from six yards after Nicky Butt's cross had been laid off by Jonathan Greening.
At this stage United were beginning to take command, and the first whistles had already started to emanate from PSV's boisterous Oost Side by the time a classic counterattack saw the Dutch champions draw level on 17 minutes.
This time it was United's defence that was caught flat-footed, Yuri Nikiforov's measured through ball dissecting the Neville brothers for Wilfred Bouma to run clear and angle an exquisite shot past Raimond van der Gouw with the outside of his left foot.
United looked sluggish and their hesitancy in defence was punished five minutes later. Mickael Silvestre's poor positional sense was exposed by Mateja Kezman's angled pass, allowing Mark van Bommel to cut into the right-hand side of the penalty area and drive a daisycutter under Van der Gouw's legs. United's jitters were turning into the shakes.
Certainly, in Bruggink and Kezman, PSV were not lacking potency in the absence of Ruud van Nistelrooy, and the front two combined again two minutes after the restart for what should have been PSV's third goal. Instead, Kezman let United off the hook, steering his shot narrowly wide of Van der Gouw's left-hand post with only the keeper to beat.
The reprieve was eagerly accepted but Kezman made amends in the 64th minute with the game's piece de resistance, skinning Silvestre on the right and, from a tight angle, rifling a devilish shot into the roof of Van der Gouw's net.
United needed to find their powers of recovery from somewhere, but they were not being only out-thought but out-fought. They were in disarray. Against a side that has not lost to English opposition since 1984, however, it could also be construed that Ferguson was a little too blase for his own good.
PSV: Waterreus, Heintze, Nikiforov, Hofland, van der Weerden, Bouma (Rommedahl 80), van Bommel, Vogel, van der Doelen (Lucius 76), Kezman (Kolkka 84), Bruggink. Subs Not Used: Lodewijks, Ooijer, Dirkx, de Jong. Booked: Vogel, Lucius. Goals: Bouma 17, van Bommel 38, Kezman 64.
MAN UTD: Van Der Gouw, Silvestre (Wallwork 70), Brown, G. Neville, P. Neville, Butt, Keane, Scholes (Giggs 70), Greening (Beckham 70), Yorke, Solskjaer. Subs Not Used: Bosnich, Johnsen, Cole, Sheringham. Booked: Scholes, Keane, Beckham. Goals: Scholes 2 pen.
Referee: M Merk (Germany).
