The departed Sir Bobby Charlton cannot save Manchester United every week. Indeed, invoking the spirit of their greatest player changed little for a team locked in a cycle of perpetual mediocrity. Save for a victory over a second-string Crystal Place in the Carabao Cup, United have yet to win a match by a margin greater than a single goal.
The value of the victory over Palace will be more thoroughly interrogated by the visit to Old Trafford of Newcastle United in the next round on Wednesday. Before that United face European champions Manchester City at home in the derby. City have lost twice in the league this season, but arguably were beaten only by Arsenal. Wolves simply bent a canine cliche to their cause; every wolf has its day, as it were.
Both defeats shared the absence of Rodri. If City have a flaw, it is the difficulty of filling the space left by the finest defensive mid in the game. Largely because he is just that. It took a very good team and a fortunate one to better them.
Having scored twice in added time to win their last Premier League game at Old Trafford against Brentford and kept out a penalty with the final action of the match on Tuesday to avoid another calamitous result in the Champions League against FC Copenhagen, United have likely exhausted their luck supply.
One of the mysteries of United’s season so far is how little criticism manager Erik ten Hag has attracted. Can it be that finishing third last year and winning the Carabao Cup is good enough for this once great club. How long can he escape accountability for performances that pale beside the vibrant work of Ange Postecogolu at Tottenham Hotspur, Unai Emery at Aston Villa and Roberto De Zerbi at Brighton and Hove Albion.
Sure, Ten Hag has not been helped by ownership issues, disciplinary problems, allegations of sexual misconduct against players, and a chronic injury backlog.
But to a greater or lesser degree, these are housekeeping issues that all great coaches must negotiate and cannot excuse the astonishing poverty of United’s play, which has no discernible pattern and is without a big idea.
Key players are not performing. Marcus Rashford is strangely ineffective as if paralysed by anxiety. The man who scored 30 goals last season has one this term.
Bruno Fernandes is a ball of wasted, angry energy, fizzing about the park to no obvious purpose. The player who offered so much hope in his first season at Old Trafford has been replaced by a permanently enraged imposter.
Antony is a five-a-side player who kills it in training but has nil appreciation of 11-aside football. He cost the club more than any player bar Paul Pogba, who was yet another example of United’s rank inefficiency in the market. I mean who lets a player go to Juventus for zip twice and buys him back in between for £89m?
Ten Hag can’t be blamed for that, but Antony is all his own work, and the underwhelming Brazilian is not the only square peg. Mason Mount cost £65m. He was bought to help solve United’s problematic midfield. He has barely featured, however, and the midfield is still shapeless.
Scott McTominay was the solution on Tuesday, reward presumably for his late show against Brentford and the opener at Bramall Lane. Yet, against Copenhagen McTominay’s selection was exposed for what it was, a knee-jerk reaction in the absence of a recognisable plan. Against a well-coached team with quick, mobile midfielders, McTominay made little impression.
Part of this was systemic, and part attributable to type. McTominay works hard but has neither the vision nor passing range to nail down a creative role. In a team that lacks ideas and purpose he is forced to seek individual solutions for which he is ill-equipped.
With a diminished Rashford and impoverished Antony either side of him Rasmus Hojlund has little upon which to feed. Across the piece United are an offensive mess, painfully once-paced, wholly predictable, and without a point of difference. As a result they are on course to repeat the woeful goal tally of last season.
After nine games United are comfortably the lowest scorers in the top half of the Premier League, amounting to less than half of the totals racked up by three teams immediately above them, Brighton, Newcastle and top-scorers Villa, teams playing a different, more dynamic game to the numbing Louis van Gaal-lite tribute served up by Ten Hag.
The coterie of pro-United pundits that fill our screens are crying out for signs of life but have neither the will nor instinct to press Ten Hag on this when given the opportunity. Paul Scholes had an unconvincing nibble on Tuesday, claiming a midfield imbalance, which was a polite way of saying United lack a functioning creative hub where control of games is to be had.
At Sheffield United on Saturday they made the Premier League’s bottom club, a team that shipped eight in their previous home game to Newcastle, look like a plausible unit. On Tuesday, FC Copenhagen bossed the pitch like European heavyweights not the Champions League novices they are.
United supporters might need pain killers on Sunday should a Rodri-inspired City burst into flame. Or even if they don’t, judging by City’s Young Boys cruise in Switzerland. Perhaps that is what it will take to recognise that far from rising to the challenge of City et al, United are a club drifting further from the centre of things.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/rTSamR5
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