EL MADRIGAL — Stand down Ernesto Valverde, Manchester United have found their interim manager. Blimey, even Chelsea might be starting to panic ahead of Sunday…
Well, it has been a long few days. United are entitled a moment’s respite from the pitiless misery of late and if you can’t get excited about a first goal for Jadon Sancho, a belter too, and a clean sheet, you are without a heart.
At the outset of this contest it seemed impossible for United to treat the match on its merits. United are a soap opera on quiet days. In the period after Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s exit, the players were actors in a story unfolding on the front pages as well as the back. United carried their difficulties like sacks of coal on their shoulders. The performance was reminiscent of that school team that gets beaten every week and becomes so shredded of belief the players compete with each other not to have the ball.
There was neither shape nor purpose in an opening period dominated by the home team. Villarreal are a Spanish fairystory not a power club. The population of the small industrial town six miles inland of the Mediterranean coast north of Valencia might fill three sides of Old Trafford at a push. Yet for the third time in three meetings this year Villarreal began a match better than United. And, worryingly for the three-time European champions, it didn’t take much.
At least United made the break intact and as the match wore on the game itself became a distraction taking minds off the noise swirling about the club. Ronaldo could have scored the opener in his sleep, a cheeky lob over a keeper stranded by own mistake. Fred has come to represent all that is wrong with this United team, can’t pass, can’t run, can’t shoot, etc, but he did his job in ambushing Etienne Capoue on the edge of the box with 12 minutes to go.
The ball bobbled up beautifully for Ronaldo to lift into the empty net. At this point Donny van de Beek and Anthony Martial, neither of whom distinguished themselves, made way for Bruno Fernandes and Marcus Rashford, who did. Van de Beek’s selection ahead of Fernandes was intended to add a bit of vim in the midfield deadzone. The reality is Van de Beek has never looked a player at United and didn’t here.
The investment in Martial in these circumstances was bizarre. A difficult player to fathom in the good times, Martial has neither the personality nor character to seize the moment and haul a team up by its boot straps. To give Carrick his due it was his stated plan to utilise his bench late in the game. From the moment Fernandes and Rashford appeared, United looked a different team.
The move that produced the second goal was vintage red, the ball passing quickly through the feet of Ronaldo, McTominay, Rashford, Fernandes and finally on to Sancho, who took one touch before blasting United into the Champions League knockout stages. And with a game to spare, to boot.
Van de Beek got the new era under way, knocking the ball back to Lindelof, who promptly launched it out of play. They must have been working on that. “You are my Solskjaer, my only Solskjaer” rang out behind one goal, the travelling United fans continuing the romantic association with their fallen hero, unable to let the idea of him go.
Though the first chance fell to United, wasted by McTominay at the far post, the first save of the game was David De Gea’s, at full stretch to palm away the shot of Moi Gomez. Pino was the next to bring dread to United’s hearts, firing into the side netting. Another fine save from De Gea to deny Trigueros midway through the first half kept United in it. Again it was hardly peak Barcelona pinging the ball about in front of the United defence, just bread and butter passing to work an opening.
We had to wait half an hour for a United effort on target, a Ronaldo (of course) header. A second Ronaldo intervention minutes later almost produced a moment of coherence. Ronaldo used the momentum of a long pass from Victor Lindelof to skip past the defender and into the area. It looked like the old magic might ignite to make a difference. Instead the move petered out around a failed back heel to Van de Beek.
Villarreal’s work was all pattern and rhythm, the stuff that results from players knowing where they are meant to be. There was no like familiarity about United, a team of strangers buffeted by events and without a semblance of control. Who knows by what fractions matches turn, but this one did and in United’s favour. A night to savour and maybe a cigar or two on the way home.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3oYiQcr
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