A bad day for Solskjaer – and Maguire
The wrong striker, some wrong subs, and the wrong kit: a frustrating afternoon at Southampton
FIVE ASIDES Premier League: Southampton 1, United 1
Seven months ago, United had a tricky little spell in the Premier League – three away games, packed into nine days. They went to Burnley, to Liverpool and to Fulham, and collected three good results: a win at each of the lesser clubs and a very respectable 0-0 at Anfield. The victory at Craven Cottage, secured by a glorious goal from Paul Pogba, lifted them to the top of the table. For the next month or so, the away games didn’t go half so well. They drew 0-0 at Arsenal, 1-1 at West Brom, 0-0 at Chelsea, 0-0 at Palace. While Man City were winning every game and needing a calculator to tot up their goal difference, United were stuck in binary. This weekend, unlike last, was just the same. Playing away, facing a weaker team, having plenty of chances, scoring only once: it may be early days, but this is not the stuff that champions are made of. The Southampton goal came from a freak deflection, following a refereeing error (Jack Stephens thumped Bruno Fernandes in the spine), whereas United goal’s was a good one, well staged by Pogba and finished by Greenwood. And yet you couldn’t argue that 1-1 was an unfair reflection of the contest.
It’s a team game, of course, but there can still be individual culprits. For United today, the biggest one was the manager. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer picked Anthony Martial as his spearhead rather than Mason Greenwood, who had shone there last weekend. In the absence of Edinson Cavani, it was a clear case of preferring your third-choice striker to your second. Greenwood is a better finisher than Martial, in better shape, and has far more promise too: he’s the stronger option both for now and for the future. Martial was returning from injury and it showed in his touch, which was leaden where Greenwood’s might well have been lethal. Martial is a player who’s not much use unless he’s fully switched on.
“We wanted to get Antho going,” Solskjaer said afterwards. You what? You don’t pick a centre-forward because you want to get him going – that’s what the Under-23s are for. You pick him because he’s sharp and hungry and fit and firing. Just ask Romelu Lukaku, who, after rejoining Chelsea, took only 15 minutes to remind Solskjaer that when he let him leave United, he discarded an ace.
If Solskjaer often makes the odd baffling selection, he even more often misuses his subs. The criminal inertia he showed in the Europa League final cropped up again at Southampton. A manager with an appetite for plan B would surely have taken Martial off at half-time, not 15 minutes later. Jadon Sancho duly played his part in United’s only dominant spell of the match, but when that faded as Southampton showed spirit, Solskjaer was reluctant to look for plan C. Of those left on the bench, the man most likely to produce the one piece of magic United were looking for was not Scott McTominay, who came on in the 76th minute, or Jesse Lingard, who appeared, almost pointlessly, in the 86th. It was Juan Mata, El Mago himself. How United could have done with his wit and wizardry. As it was, with Southampton getting away with some time-wasting, United didn’t even create the one late chance that’s usuallly guaranteed for a team chasing a win. And Mata was left kicking his heels yet again, just like Donny van de Beek.
For the second week running, Solskjaer fielded a starting XI entirely drawn from last season’s squad. He’s like that member of your family who has a good eye for a new outfit, goes out and buys it, and then leaves it languishing in the wardrobe. He may have felt that Sancho and Raphael Varane still weren’t ready, and that last season’s squad seldom let him down. Well, yes, but two of United’s steadiest performers from 2020/21 had a bad day today. Fred kept giving the ball away, which is a luxury United can’t afford: when you create as few chances as he does, you really have to be neat and tidy. Harry Maguire was equally sloppy, and would have paid a high price for it had it not been for Adam Armstrong. The striker bought from Blackburn to fill the shoes of Danny Ings looks, as yet, more like a Dan James tribute act – speedy, tireless and the opposite of clinical. Had Ings still been there, United might well have lost 3-1. Solskjaer swears by Maguire, but on present form it may not be Victor Lindelof who makes way for Varane.
United wore their new third kit, blue with yellow shorts. It’s quite a nice kit, with just one problem: it’s not a United kit. Royal blue and lemon yellow means Chelsea, or Leicester, or Everton. Mind you, the new second kit isn’t United either – the shirt is pale blue, which only means one team in Manchester. Yes, I know both these shades of blue have been seen in the megastore in the past. But that doesn’t make them right, any more than the prices Adidas charge the fans to wear them. The campaign to bring back white shirts and black shorts, with a bit of red trim, starts here. Now that the grounds are alive again, we should be seeing United in their true colours.