Skinner’s reminder of Lyon’s ability cannot be ignored as they boasted a side including 2018 Ballon d’Or winner Ada Hegerberg and USA World Cup winner Lindsey Heaps.<\/p>\n
Legendary France centre-back Wendie Renard was an unused substitute and elite players such as Lily Yohannes, Kadidiatou Diani and Marie-Antoinette Katoto all came on in the second half.<\/p>\n
That quality and the “speed and physicality” were the differences on the night, according to Skinner, but he also recognised the gap between United and Europe’s elite.<\/p>\n
“Theirs is the upper echelon of that,” added Skinner. “They pay for it. They have grown in experience and have built that team over a long period of time.<\/p>\n
“The reality is you have to be at your game in every moment because if not, they can take their opportunities. They were the better team – but I would expect them to be.<\/p>\n
“It’s a juxtaposition because I don’t want to lose games. But we also have to take a moment and go, we’ve already qualified, let’s see where we go. <\/p>\n
“All the things you see, I see. I also know what the fix is, but you can’t do it in one moment, you have to build it. We are progressing.”<\/p>\n
Lyon boss Jonatan Giraldez described United’s season as “super positive” and said the answer to progress is about building a mentality to be better than the day before.<\/p>\n
United’s challenge will only get greater as they look to continue their journey in the Champions League. <\/p>\n
They currently sit ninth in the 18-team league table and occupying an unseeded position for the play-offs. <\/p>\n
If they can climb at least one place, they will be seeded and avoid stronger opposition. <\/p>\n
Skinner said that gives them more incentive to perform in their final league phase match against sixth-placed Juventus on 17 December – but just getting to this stage has been an achievement.<\/p>\n
“When you go into the knockout stages, it is what it is. You have to play the best teams,” he added.<\/p>\n
“We go [to Juventus] with confidence to try to win the game and see what happens. Our objective was always to qualify and we have done that. Where we finish is a bonus.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Skinner’s reminder of Lyon’s ability cannot be ignored as they boasted a side including 2018 Ballon d’Or winner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-310051","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}