Former Manchester United defender Rio Ferdinand has accused the team of lacking a fighting spirit following their 2-0 defeat at the hands of Liverpool this evening.

The Red Devils barely mustered a chance at Anfield in the first ever European meeting between the two bitter rivals, giving themselves a mountain to climb in the second leg of their Europa League last 16 tie at Old Trafford next week.

Ferdinand insists that his former club will need to perform a lot better than they did at Anfield to get themselves back into the tie, and believes that the quality of the squad has decreased in recent seasons.

"To see the lack of fight, the lack of urgency, the lack of cohesion in the team, there is going to have to be a massive, massive improvement in the next leg at Old Trafford because that wasn't good enough. There are no excuses. Sometimes you can look at the manager, but then you've got to ask yourself, the players out on the pitch, you've got to put in a performance," he told BT Sport.

"You've got to show some sort of fight and today we didn't see that, and that's one of the most disappointing things you can say about a performance. It didn't look like they had the fight, and the cohesion and patterns of play was non-existent today.

"[Angel] di Maria, Nani, [Patrice] Evra, [Danny] Welbeck, [Javier Hernandez], [Jonny] Evans, [Darren] Fletcher, Rafael, [Shinji] Kagawa - I could go on. Are they worse than the players that were out there? They're better than that team. That's the problem. There's been a shift in the last few years where it has gone backwards, and that's the disappointing thing."

Ferdinand's former United teammate Paul Scholes was also scathing in his criticism of Louis van Gaal's side.