Roy Keane plays with brutal honesty. Now, in the bitter aftermath of his team's latest European Cup disappointment, he spoke in the same unforgiving way. Manchester United's captain blames . . . Manchester United. "We blew it," he said. "It's as simple as that."

Keane's personal post-mortem on the failure - he called it "disaster" - at Bayer Leverkusen was just as cutting as the one he delivered after United's elimination, also on German soil, last season.

Now, just over 12 months later, United came up short. And again the captain's verdict was much harsher than Sir Alex Ferguson's. Unlike the manager, who spoke of Leverkusen's "luck" at the BayArena, Keane said his team had self-destructed in both games, especially in defence.

"This club deserves to win European Cup finals and we blew it," he said. "We had a great opportunity and these sort of chances don't come along very often."

With the prospect of a classic Anglo-Spanish confrontation final in Glasgow now in ruins, he added: "This club belongs in the European Cup final."

So Keane, at 30, saw another European Cup final elude him. He had reason to be the most dejected of all, yet said: "It's more disappointing for the manager, the staff and the fans. I think they deserved better than this."

He conceded United had lacked ruthlessness - they surrendered the lead three times overall. "It's very hard to win the European Cup if you give goals away like we did."

· Sven-Goran Eriksson has postponed the announcement of his 23-man England World Cup squad for two days, from next Tuesday to Thursday, because of Manchester United v Arsenal and Liverpool v Blackburn on Wednesday.

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