An opening-day defeat to Crystal Palace set the tone for what was a difficult start for Manchester United, four home matches all against London clubs, three defeats, one draw, two goals for, 10 against.
Were you to have spent the subsequent six months on the moon you could not begin to fathom how United sit second only to Manchester City in the Premier League.
They were as poor at Selhurst Park as they were in that first encounter at Old Trafford. Imagine being sat in your space suit trying to comprehend how United rolled into the Croydon hinterland on the back of an unbeaten run on the road that stood at 20 matches, the best in the division.
As we head into the season’s final quarter, United have found their level, a cavernous 14 points behind leaders Manchester City at the start of play.
The wonder is they remain narrowly the best of the rest. With City looming at the weekend, this will have been identified as a points grab. But with only three wins in nine, United would have to find some oomph from somewhere to do to Palace what they failed to achieve against West Brom and Sheffield United. No chance.
The signals were all wrong at the start on a misty night in South London. United were jumpy. Palace were all over them.
Whatever United work on in training, good starts are not part of it, or if they are, the players are unable to carry out instructions. Ten minutes elapsed before we had a rhythmic shift through the gears from the zebra team. And then Vicente Guaita, at full stretch, kept out a thunderous wallop by Nemanja Matic.
Marcus Rashford was next in the slot, accepting a sharp pass from Luke Shaw, exercising tight control and then pulling his shot wide of a post. These are the marginal shortcomings that has the critics screaming for a private jet post-haste to Dortmund for that blond bloke from Norway. United had wrestled control but not yet the advantage.
Palace, folded into a needless defensive shape, were schooled to contain and hit on the break through Eberechi Eze and Andros Townsend. The absence of Wilf Zaha limited the scope of Palace to discomfit United. His replacement, Christian Benteke, feeds on crosses Palace could not supply.
For all their notional supremacy, United’s eruption of promise proved all too brief, replaced by the now familiar, one-paced malaise. Unable to pierce the Palace defensive shield, they bumped into each other on the edge of the box, passed backwards and started again. The Bruno Fernandes magic is increasingly assumed. Rashford is that beautifully engineered, high-end motor hampered by a mysterious misfire.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer must know by heart his half-time team-talks. They start something like this, “For f**k’s sake, lads, pull you fingers out.”
Or maybe he sat his team down and made them watch the Sky broadcast to see what the pundits thought of it. “Very goalless,” said Kelly Cates. Magnificent.
And so to the second period. Again Palace were quicker to the ball and to threaten. A woeful miskick from Benteke spared United’s embarrassment. United hacked the ball into the mist and on the game chugged.
Solskjaer yanked Fred and the anonymous Edinson Cavani for Scott McTominay and Dan James in quick succession with 15 minutes to go in a late push for respectability.
Having won here unconvincingly on their previous four visits, there was a United precedent for turning muck into brass. Leicester’s draw at Burnley earlier in the evening should have given United a free pass to let the choke out, as opposed to choke over the opportunity to put three points on their rivals.
Watching this porridge of a performance, Pep Guardiola must be considering giving his heavy hitters a rest in Sunday’s Manchester derby. You dread to think what horrors full bore City might visit on this ensemble. Don’t be fooled by the Agincourt speech inevitably being polished by Solskjaer ahead of the game. His team are back in the fug of earlier malfunctions, his so-called big players diminished in the face of even the most modest challenges.
No urgency, no pace, no clue. Lost not in the mists of Selhurst Park but in a lack of purpose and ideas.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/38490y3
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