Jokes and Nostalgia. The subject of both is what Manchester United have become. The car crash involving Bruno Fernandes on Monday? Manchester United. Get it?
A more sympathetic social media post involved a winning goal at Anfield scored by Wayne Rooney a decade ago. Those were the days when the game’s marque players wore the red of Manchester not Liverpool.
Whom in a United shirt would interest Jurgen Klopp now? Jadon Sancho? Fernandes? Luke Shaw? Maybe, but none would start.
It is a function of Arsenal’s fragility and Spurs being Spurs that Manchester travel to Liverpool remotely associated with Champions League qualification.
The contest at Anfield has the potential to make Edvard Munch caricatures of United fans, watching with The Scream etched across their faces.
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If Norwich, the Premier League’s bottom club, can depart Old Trafford justifiably frustrated by a narrow 3-2 defeat, imagine what a tanked-up Liverpool might do to the Mancunian invertebrates. One thing is certain, Ralf Rangnick cannot risk a midfield of Fernandes, Paul Pogba and Jesse Lingard against the merciless machinery of the Kop.
It is not that the funboy three that started against Norwich lack discipline or effort per se, more that they lack the instinct for defence and the cultural structures to knock them into shape. Poor Rangnick was persuaded out of semi-retirement by the lure of Old Trafford.
What seemed like a lottery win late in his career was quickly reassessed as a hospital ball. Like Ole Gunnar Solskjaer before him. Rangnick is across the problem, he just can’t apply the fix.
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- Match: Liverpool vs Manchester United in the Premier League
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It must be galling to find ranged against him at Anfield a coach in Klopp steeped in the principles of gegenpressing, the tactic of which he was an early pioneer, plus half a dozen players formerly schooled by him.
Step forward Sadio Mane, Roberto Firmino, Joel Matip, Ibrahima Konate, Naby Keita and Takumi Minamino. It is almost like an act of self harm. There is no point even thinking about fourth place if United repeat the dissolute, porous muck served up against Norwich. That is Rangnick’s observation, not mine.
The trip to Anfield is the first of three hot fixtures in nine days. United head to Arsenal on Saturday followed by the visit of Chelsea. At least by Thursday week, those United fans still investing in the idea of the fourth-place miracle might be spared the agony of hope.
Rangnick would surrender a limb to have a Klopp’s concerns. Imagine were Mo Salah’s lack of goals your biggest headache. As if Salah is defined only by goals and not the needle-threading passes upon which his team-mates gorge.
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Though this might be unfair on the hat-trick king of the age but you could argue Rangnick has the opposite problem in Cristiano Ronaldo, a player who views assists as an insult to his boot supplier.
Klopp is in the enviable position of augmenting from a position of strength. Luis Diaz is the kind of judicious signing Sir Alex Ferguson used to make for United, a player of the right age, 25, and profile who turns out to be good enough to replace the great Sadio Mane without anyone noticing.
Ibrahima Konate is another who might easily have gone elsewhere but came to Liverpool, a beast of centre-half and just 22 years old. None of this is coincidence but the result of a club with its ducks in a row.
United are still bottoming out. The imminent arrival of Erik ten Hag is seen as the catalyst to meaningful change. In 2014 his fellow Dutchman Louis van Gaal asked for three years to turn United around. The club laughed, and sacked him after two whilst the FA Cup was still warm in his hands. It’s been largely tears since, with more promised in Kloppland.
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