Manchester United boss Louis van Gaal blamed "the law of Murphy" for United's Europa League defeat to Midtjylland on Thursday.
Goalkeeper David De Gea was unable to play after suffering a knee injury the warm-up, bringing the number of players on United's injury list past a dozen.
Despite a valiant effort from reserve keeper Sergio Romero, United let an early lead slip away in Denmark, and Van Gaal cited the old saying of Murphy's law that "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."
"When you start the game and your goalkeeper is number 14 [players out injured] then you are not starting like usual I think," Van Gaal said on BT Sport.
"A lot of things are happening in the heads of the players and the first 10 or 15 minutes we were not so good. But after that we came in the match, we scored, we could have scored more.
"The second half we didn't win any duel, any second ball. You cannot afford a second goal, but we could have scored also. Jesse Lingard had two remarkable chances, so it is the law of Murphy I think."
The Dutchman said De Gea was forced out by a knee problem.
He added: "We have to wait and see, we have to investigate tomorrow with a scan, we cannot answer now."
Michael Carrick was more scathing of the team and admitted they were not at the races.
The experienced midfielder said: "It's just not good enough, it's not acceptable, the performance and the result, it's nowhere near good enough. It's got to be a lot better.
"I think we caused a lot of our own problems. We haven't played well enough. We didn't kick on after we scored."