United will miss Euro adventures

Manchester United's failure to qualify for the next Champions League means that 2013-14 was a failure for the club. There were many other shortcomings which contributed to the 7th place league finish; the poor football, the woeful home form and the mistake of appointing David Moyes, but that one deficiency overruled the other factors. Moyes would have survived had he led his team to that minimum of targets: fourth place.

United are geared up towards playing in that competition every season. Players' contracts have Champions League clauses in them and it's almost taken as a given that they will be activated. And why not? United have played in the Champions League every year since 1995.

Back then, only one English club went into the competition -- the champions. United finished second and only qualified for the UEFA Cup where their first tie was in Russia. 140 of us flew to Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, to see United take on Rotor Volgograd. It was the club's smallest away following since 1968, when the club won the European Cup for the first time.

The city had two principal hotels then. United's players and officials stayed in one and we fans were put with the journalists in the other. To our amusement, ours was marginally superior -- we had beds which you could lie down in fully flat, while the players complained of having to curl up as their beds were a little over five foot.

Volgograd had been described as "grim" by one British newspaper, but Manchester was often described as such and that wasn't accurate either. Volgograd's residents were friendly and the vista boasted the river Volga and the world's largest statue -- Mother Russia.

There were only two bars for a city of two million and restaurants were thin on the ground, but it felt like a great adventure. Aside from one loony local berating us for being English and the police telling us off for sitting in the home end, it was good fun.

It's that spirit of adventure which makes so many of the regular United Euro away travellers go to games. They'd rather play in the Champions League than the Europa League, but plenty were looking forward to the prospect of trips to unusual destinations in the Europa League next season -- not that United were good enough to qualify for it.

United's ruling Glazer family wanted Europa qualification because it would have limited the damage to the bottom line from missing out on the Champions League. More games would have meant more minutes to play players too and interim manager Ryan Giggs was told to do what he could for United to qualify. Whatever, it wasn't enough.

European football has become the norm for United fans and the Europa League is mocked, but I can remember the excitement of the draws which accompanied games in the 1990-91 Cup Winners' Cup. United visited Pecs in Hungary, Wrexham in Wales, Montpellier in France and Warsaw in Poland, none of them usual Champions League destinations. Happy memories were formed in all. Then there was the final in Rotterdam, where United beat Johan Cruyff's Barcelona. Did it matter then that it wasn't the European Cup? Not at all, expectations were lower.

The current Europa League includes so many games that it can be seen as a distraction, but I would rather have seen United in it than not, the team topping up their levels of European experience and becoming accustomed to two games most weeks. Better that than playing 'lucrative' friendlies to make up the shortfall as is now likely United will do on occasions next term.

United's 64-point haul is the lowest since 1991's 59 points. Then, United eased up at the end of the season to concentrate on that Rotterdam final -- which meant more European football the following season. It was so long ago that Wimbledon finished a place below United in the league, Crystal Palace finished third. So long ago that Ryan Giggs made his debut. He's still undecided about his future.

Fans are saying good riddance to 2013-14 and, if they don't want to forget United for a good few months, they're trying to look forward. It has been a sobering experience after the sustained successes of the previous 24 years, one which nobody saw coming. Third or fourth maybe, but seventh?

Even United didn't expect it. When I interviewed Phil Neville late in December, he maintained that United were going for the title. United did manage a run of five December wins before the abyss of January saw such thoughts buried. Even then, the club line remained that "we must all be doing better". Blame was not apportioned to individuals as it was post Olympiakos (0-2), Liverpool (0-3) and City (0-3) two months later.