But it was the fact that his side would not be back at the Millennium Stadium next weekend competing for a place in the Premiership which most troubled Wise.

“It was the FA Cup which cost us,” said Wise. “A lot of the lads focused too much on that instead of focusing on playing the league games.

“But I’m proud of them. We have a lot of young kids and we missed Danny Dichio (suspended) and Kevin Muscat (injured).

“In the Nationwide League you haven’t got a big squad and when you lose players you start bringing kids in. They were key players in my team and we missed them.”

Wise conceded the opening goal by Cristiano Ronaldo just two minutes before half-time, after Millwall had survived a wave of United attacks, was the turning point.

“That was our mistake,” said Wise. “It cost us dearly. If we had gone in at half-time level they would have been panicking a little bit.

“I wasn’t fully fit. I was feeling it and I’m still feeling it. We just felt it would be right. I had so many young kids on the bench and a couple playing as well, I didn’t want to put that responsibility on another.

“We saw the difference playing at their level and the level we play at. You can’t give them a second.

“We were disappointed at conceding a goal at that time. We set out a plan, it seemed like it was working, but obviously it was very difficult to get back into it after that.”

Wise, like most people, disagreed with England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson’s choice of two-goal Ruud van Nistelrooy as man of the match. He would have given it to Ronaldo, who gave Millwall defender Robbie Ryan a torrid time.

“We showed Robbie a video on him,” said Wise. “But Ronaldo has got an awful lot of talent. He’s got quality. He can open people up. He caused Robbie a lot of problems. Robbie tried but Ronaldo should have been the man-of-the-match.

“We were just hoping they were going to have a bad day and we were going to have an extremely good day and it might have been different. You live in hope.

“Everyone thought we would get annihilated but we gave it a go. That’s all I could ask of them really.

“They’re a bit down but I got them together and told them we have been beaten by a top quality side. I said ‘You ain’t embarrassed yourselves, you’ve done yourself proud.’

“It’s a learning curve for us and they have learned a lot from that game.”

Wise revealed he wants to add five players to his squad in the summer but is uncertain whether chairman Theo Paphitis shares his ambition.

“Whether Theo lets me do it I don’t know,” said Wise. “I’ve told him if he would like to get promotion we need some players. I want to have a go.”