OLD TRAFFORD — Whoever writes these continental scripts for Cristiano Ronaldo should start to make room on the mantelpiece for another Oscar.
It looked like the writing was on the wall for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, and the man in the centre of the pitch throwing his toys out the pram as a disastrous Manchester United fell two goals behind against Atalanta, would be seen as the disruptive influence to be the final death knell for the Norwegian.
But in a dramatic spectacle only he can perform, the Portuguese megastar did it again, heading a brilliant winner to earn United a victory that, once again, they did not deserve.
It was a performance riddled with defensive errors and again lacking a formation to be able to subdue any opponent, but individual brilliance, typified by the towering Ronaldo header that earned United another Champions League success having come back from the dead, pulled them through. It was Solskjaer’s reign in one match, but the result, somehow, was a positive one and puts them on course for the Champions League knockout stages.
It could, and perhaps should, have been oh so different.
Having assessed the mangled corpse in the aftermath of their defeat at Leicester on Saturday, Solskjaer insisted that the post-mortem had revealed to him change was needed ahead of the visit of Atalanta.
In his programme notes, a defiant Norwegian insisted he is fully aware of the team’s plight, and that he could make it work, but inside 15 minutes, it was apparent zero lessons had been learned, as Mario Pasalic stroked Atalanta in front.
The men from Bergamo are a real success story but they did not have to be at their free-flowing best to scythe through a static, bedazzled United to create the opening for Palasic to silence the Stretford End.
As any Manchester resident will tell you, when it rains in this part of the world, it doesn’t half pour, and soon enough, Solskjaer’s nightmare just got that bit more terrifying as, for the third time in five days, United conceded from a set piece, and the main protagonist in the King Power tragedy, Maguire, was again culpable: Merih Demiral the grateful recipient before the clock had struck 29 minutes.
For all their guile in attack, Atalanta are anything but resolute further back, and the chances kept coming in the first half for United, with Fred slicing just wide and Marcus Rashford clipping the top of the crossbar just before half-time, when he really should have made the net bulge.
United trudged off at the interval to a smattering of boos, which were applauded by Solskjaer as he made his way down the tunnel seemingly as bewildered as anyone that United ended a Champions League first half at Old Trafford trailing by two goals for the first time in their history.
Whatever was said at half time seemed to galvanise an out-of-sorts Bruno Fernandes more than most, as he appeared for the second period a different beast entirely, laying on a sumptuous pass for Rashford to arrow United back in the contest in the 53rd minute, and continued to pull the strings as he started the move that led to Scott McTominay being denied by the post.
With cavalry of the quality the Duke of Wellington could only dream of possessing, on came Paul Pogba, Edinson Cavani and Jadon Sancho to add to the myriad of attacking talent in red, but it was down the other end where the next goalmouth action took place, as David de Gea kept United in it with a brilliant double save.
It was symptomatic of the chaotic nature of Solskjaer’s United that it was Maguire who fired the hosts level – the marking was very, well, Manchester United-esque.
Things got so hectic and exhilarating the crowd bore witness to the incongruous sight of Ronaldo tracking back as United chased the winner, but the veteran hero still had the legs to burst down the other end and spark pandemonium in the Stretford End, as he bulleted Luke Shaw’s cross into the net to earn his beleaguered side and manager a crucial success.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/30KTNBc
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