Right. Let's talk about Manchester United Women getting knocked out of the Champions League by Bayern Munich. Their first ever campaign in the competition. Quarterfinals. Munich. Lights blazing, crowd roaring, the whole lot.

And they got taught a lesson.

Now before you all pile on, I'm not here to have a go at the United women. Far from it. Getting to the quarters in your first go is genuinely impressive. I managed Barnet for three years and the closest we got to European football was a pre-season friendly against a pub team from Calais. So fair play to them.

But here's what's getting my goat. The coverage afterwards. "Valuable learning experience." "They'll come back stronger." "This is just the beginning."

In my day, when you lost, you lost. You didn't dress it up like some sort of educational seminar. Nobody pulled me aside after we got thumped 4-0 by Doncaster and said, "Don't worry, Andy, this is a valuable learning experience." My chairman said, "Win next week or you're sacked." That was MY learning experience.

The gap between United and the European elite was there for everyone to see. Bayern were slicker, sharper, better drilled. They moved the ball like they'd been doing it together for years. Because they have been. That's the difference. Bayern have been building their women's programme properly for a long time. United are still playing catch up.

And that's the problem with modern football. Everyone wants the glory without putting in the decades of graft. You can't just rock up to the Champions League and expect to compete with teams who've been at this level since before your programme was even a twinkle in Ed Woodward's spreadsheet.

I'll tell you what it reminded me of. My Torquay side going to play Arsenal in the League Cup third round, 2003. We were buzzing. The lads were walking around like they'd already won it. "We're playing Arsenal, gaffer!" Yeah, and Arsenal played us off the park inside twenty minutes. The dream died faster than my central heating that winter.

Don't get me started on the pundits calling it a "fairy tale" though. A fairy tale? Since when does a fairy tale end with you getting knocked out in the quarters? Cinderella didn't get to the ball and then get bounced by a German bouncer at the door. That's not a fairy tale. That's a Tuesday night in Magaluf.

Look, credit where it's due. Marc Skinner and his staff did well to get United that far. The players gave everything. But the honest truth, the one nobody wants to say on the telly because it doesn't sound nice, is that United were outclassed. Not embarrassed. Not humiliated. Just outclassed. There's a difference, and it's an important one.

Bayern showed them what years of sustained investment and proper planning looks like. Not a spending spree. Not a panic buy window. Actual, long term, boring, unglamorous structure. The sort of thing that doesn't make headlines but wins you football matches in April when it matters.

United need to look at this and be brutally honest. Not "we go again" honest. Properly honest. The kind of honest where you sit in a cold dressing room in Munich and admit you're not there yet. Because they're not. And pretending otherwise doesn't help anyone.

In my day, the best thing about a bad defeat was it told you exactly where you stood. No sugarcoating. No motivational quotes on Instagram. Just the cold hard truth staring at you from the scoreboard.

United's women will be back. I believe that. But they'll only get better if they stop calling defeats fairy tales and start calling them what they are.

Defeats.