OLD TRAFFORD — Back to square one. Minus one. Just when you thought Manchester United are on the way back to the top, they self-destruct like no other team can.
The visit of Everton represented the start of a run of fixtures – United don’t play any of the traditional “Big Six” until mid-January – that was supposed to give the truest indication of where Ruben Amorim’s project is headed, on the anniversary of his first game in charge.
Not victories at Anfield, but clashes against those bottom-half teams who made last season the campaign from hell it became.
Amorim could almost see it coming. When faced with questions last week of whether he was eyeing the kind of run that could really propel United into an unlikely title tilt over the next few months, he insisted he was only looking ahead to the next game.
An age-old footballing cliche, but his point was that United tend to struggle against teams lower down the table, unable to rouse enough intensity in lower key encounters.
"He's snapped at his OWN team-mate"
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) November 24, 2025
Idrissa Gueye is sent-off after raising a hand at Michael Keanepic.twitter.com/zNIcEU2fA5
Unlike everything else he has touched in the past 12 disappointing months around Old Trafford, Amorim was right. We now know where United are, one game into the fixtures that were supposed to help them finally make it all the way around their unnavigable turned corner.
United remain as far from returning to anything like their former grandeur than at any point since Sir Alex Ferguson headed for the hills in 2013.
Everything fell into place for United right from the off against Everton, in the most astonishing fashion.
It was hardly Kieron Dyer versus Lee Bowyer in 2005, but Idrissa Gana Gueye lost his cool with team-mate Michael Keane, raised his hands and was shown a straight red card.
Old Trafford was stunned. Jordan Pickford’s grappling of Gueye to the tunnel, like a nightclub bouncer ending an overzealous reveller’s night prematurely, told you all you needed to know about how heated the exchange was.
Amorim admitted afterwards he wouldn’t have minded something similar from his players. Anything to get them going.
From thereon in, David Moyes’s decades-long wait for a win at Old Trafford as an opposition manager seemed certain to rumble on. Yet, doing the utmost to undo all their impressive recent resurgence, the home side administered a clinic on how not to play against 10 men.
Rather than using their numerical advantage by being patient in possession, dragging defenders out to create gaps in which to exploit, they were panicked and hurried on the ball, while looking vulnerable themselves.
Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall’s arrowing strike that found the top corner was the opener Everton deserved – the only team offering even a suggestion of endeavour.
Boos rung out around the ground after United’s worst first-half display of the season – in a packed field. Joshua Zirkzee, given the chance his off-field positivity deserved, had 45 minutes to forget.
It was, of course, one-way traffic in the second half. Everton did not muster another meaningful attack all match. But they hardly had to lay their bodies on the line to keep United out, either.
Bruno Fernandes should have scored from close range, with Zirkzee going close with three headers, but otherwise Pickford was left to the eccentric time-wasting he has made his calling card down the years.
As Everton tired late on, space appeared and several golden moments came, and went, for an equaliser. It would not have been warranted.
What was fully deserved was the cacophony of discontent that greeted the final whistle. United players looked on, shellshocked as Moyes celebrated a famous success that takes his Everton side above Liverpool in the table.
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Victory could have moved United up to fourth, in the Champions League spots for the first time since the end of the 2022-23 campaign. Lofty heights that could have actually done more harm than good. A top-four team Manchester United are not. Not by any stretch.
One year of Amorim and we still don’t really understand his system, why he is so wedded to his beliefs. There has been plenty of recent improvement that will buy him time but, to quote a ghost of recent past, only marginal gains.
As is the case at United, they are only ever two defeats from another crisis. We go again. Another almighty fall might be on the way soon enough. All is normal again in the world.
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