Fergie fury at blundering defenders

Sir Alex Ferguson tore into his defenders last night after Manchester United slumped to a 2-1 Champions League defeat.

Mistakes by Rio Ferdinand and Mikael Silvestre handed Stuttgart two goals early in the second half, and a Ruud van Nistelrooy penalty was not enough to stop United dropping to third place in Group E.

Chelsea fared even worse, losing 2-0 at Stamford Bridge to Turkish champions Besiktas, who were reduced to 10 men for much of the second half.

Ferguson was furious at his defenders' basic errors. He said: 'We surrendered control. We defended terribly for the two goals and if you defend badly in games of this nature you deserve to get beaten.

'With our experience, we should have done better.'

United were comfortable with the game goalless at half-time but Ferdinand slipped up to allow Imre Szabics to open the scoring in the 50th minute and Silvestre was the culprit two minutes later as Kevin Kuranyi doubled the lead.

Van Nistelrooy's penalty came after Cristiano Ronaldo was fouled in the box by goalkeeper Timo Hildebrand. Ferdinand completed a miserable evening when he was injured while fouling Kuranyi to concede a penalty that was subsequently saved by goalkeeper Tim Howard with nine minutes left.