This is an extract of The Score. Click the sign-up box below to receive the newsletter every Monday morning this season for Daniel Storey’s verdict on all 20 Premier League clubs
OLD TRAFFORD — There will be a day, probably not that far into the future, when Erik ten Hag will no longer be manager of Manchester United.
It will be for the best, on balance. This is a coach who we were told is obsessed by control and process. It’s hard to work out what the plan for this team is, other than playing on the edge of its nerves.
Still, we will also miss out on the most extraordinary entertainment when Ten Hag goes. The ends of the Louis van Gaal and Jose Mourinho eras came with stupefying fare, football on a technicality. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer stopped being able to rely upon individual brilliance.
Ten Hag? It’s an absolute circus with all the fun of the fair. We will miss it dearly.
When Manchester United succeed in games such as this, you are left openly laughing, a “How do they keep getting away with this?” frown-grin. Of course they don’t always – see Chelsea on Thursday night – but this team allows their opponents to take 20 or more shots with such regularity that it is amazing it ever works out well at all. Afternoons like Sunday stick out.
But United’s great attribute is the profligacy of their opponents. On the one hand Liverpool merited victory: chances, breaks, shots. On the other, they were their own worst enemies.
We figured that Liverpool’s defending might cost them in this title race, given the absentees in their own third – Alisson, Alexander-Arnold, Konate. At Old Trafford, all three of their forwards held them back.
Darwin Nunez is fascinating enough for the fluctuating narrative around his performances to have lasted long into his second season in England, but he was more hindrance than help against United.
Twice he clogged up moves with arrant passes, twice more he slipped when on the break. When presented with the ball three yards from goal, his shot went slightly backwards. Chaos can be useful and is always fun; so too is having a striker who you can predict.
What’s most interesting is how Mohamed Salah actually mirrors Nunez, albeit without earning the same reputation. There are few players in the world whose highest and lowest point are further apart than Salah, a wide forward who can do three things badly before making you look like a fool by doing the fourth thing exceptionally.
The chance he hit six yards over the bar with his right foot will be replayed on repeat in the sleeping hours of Liverpool supporters.
Luis Diaz was the exception against United. He took his goal well, albeit with a stumble. He created three chances and dribbled past Manchester United players more times than every one of his teammates combined.
And then he missed the most glorious chance of them all, in stoppage time. The away end jumped as if to celebrate, certain of what was about to follow. They hit the ground with a sigh and a groan and two points dropped.
This has been a theme of Liverpool’s season, and it may cost them the title. When Jurgen Klopp’s team won the title in 2019-20, they won eight of their 10 matches against the other teams in the top six. This season, Liverpool’s 3-0 home win over Aston Villa was their only win against the top six – five draws and two defeats.
In those draws and defeats, Liverpool have scored seven goals in seven games. They have taken 125 shots in those matches, most of them shared between their front three. The Premier League average for shots per goal is around one in nine. Against their top-six peers, Liverpool average a goal every 18 shots.
Which may well be what bars them from achieving their perfect send-off. In a feature this week, we reflected upon what Liverpool must do to secure Klopp’s destiny. “Taking their chances against United,” was the first heading. We knew it, they knew it, everyone inside Old Trafford knew it.
Knowing is not doing. The lasting image from Sunday’s clown car entertainment should have been Casemiro desperately running through PVA glue in an attempt to stop a Liverpool counter, 40 yards from goal when the ball beat Andre Onana. Instead, it will be several thousand Liverpool supporters, heads in their hands as Salah and Diaz each did the same in stoppage time.
This is an extract of The Score. Click the sign-up box below to receive the newsletter every Monday morning this season for Daniel Storey’s verdict on all 20 Premier League clubs
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