“For a club of Man United’s stature it was not an easy thing to deal with.”

Phil Jones has spoken of Manchester United’s pain at crashing out of the Champions League in the group stages last season, saying it was a bitter pill to swallow.

Manchester United were drawn in what most would call an ‘easy’ group of FC Basel, Benfica and Otellul Galati but struggled, and found themselves finishing third behind Benfica and Basel.

This season there has been no such mistakes as they top their group and have already advanced to the competition’s knockout stages, but the memories of the previous campaign are still vivid for the young defender who made his first appearance this season 2 weeks ago against Galatasaray in the competition:

“It was a bitter pill to swallow. For a club of Manchester United’s stature it was not an easy thing to deal with.

“This club is used to being in semi-finals and finals of the Champions and even winning it, so it was not a nice feeling to get knocked out of the Champions League the way we did.

“But We’ve bounced back incredibly well this season. The lads have played some terrific stuff in the Champions League games that I’ve seen. Hopefully we can kick on and go as far as we can.”