West Ham 2-1 Man Utd (Summerville 74′, Bowen 90+2′ pen | Casemiro 81′)
LONDON STADIUM — A penalty that made even West Ham blush settled an encounter in added time that they could have lost by a bucket load before half-time. The sense of injustice allowed Erik ten Hag to peel off the familiar excuses but the facts are as bald as his pate. He is not the man to lead Manchester United.
Four league defeats in nine is not an accidental stat. Yes they squandered four gilt-edged chances in half an hour, but in the second half that old inertia reasserted itself and a team that was flatter than a shirt front for 45 minutes, led by a manager even more unpopular than Ten Hag, turned the game on its head with three dynamic substitutions.
Where Julen Lopetegui seized the day at the break, Ten Hag sat back waiting for something to happen, with the now common result. United first fell behind, and after stealing an equaliser with ten minutes to go, found a way not to capitalise on all that early promise.
VAR Michael Oliver’s intervention might have been another performative twist that befuddled all but him and the man in the middle David Coote, yet that cannot be allowed to mask the rank incompetence of the coach overseeing United’s continuing decline.
If new joint owners Ineos cannot see that with their expensively assembled so-called “best-in class” technical department, then they are just as implausible as the Dutchman. It is hard to convey how poor West Ham were until the introduction of the rapid Crysencio Summerville, weirdly overlooked at the start of the game, and Tomas Soucek at the start of the second half.
Alejandro Garnacho might have had two in the opening eight minutes. Of the many issues Ten Hag has failed to resolve, finding the back of the net has been the most problematic. Had Erling Haaland or Mo Salah been feeding off Bruno Fernandes’s safe-cracker passes, West Ham would have been on life support.
Fernandes was no better when heading Casemiro’s cross over the bar with Lukasz Fabianski flapping at air. Diogo Dalot would surpass the pair with a classic of the type, smashing the ball over an empty net having dinked it over the keeper. Astonishing.
The clock had struck 31 when Dalot torched that fourth opening, vividly explaining why United have not scored a goal in the opening 35 minutes of any Premier League match this season. They have yet to notch 60 league goals a season under Ten Hag and are running a goal difference deficit this term.
The confident clip with which United began was always in danger of being undermined but in West Ham they had in the first half an accommodating foe at a low organisational ebb. The gaps in midfield made it easy for United to reset. Failed attacks were quickly repurposed against a team that had no means of keeping the ball.
The opening half was thus a parade, with Fernandes and Casemiro enjoying the freedom to do as they wished. The latter has been gradually rehabilitated since the rinsing against Liverpool at Old Trafford and in the kind of space allowed him here continues to roll like a Bentley. His one-touch link play with Fernandes was orchestral in its timing and repeatedly freed Garnacho down the left.
But it all came to a fat nothing. Ten Hag justifiably complained about what looked prima facie to be not only an awful decision but an unnecessary intervention way after the play had moved on. Be that as it may, what came before condemns him, and those who keep him in post.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/RsHCWND
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