FIVE ASIDES Premier League: United 2, Liverpool 1
If you want United to beat Liverpool, hire a Dutchman. This was only United’s sixth league win over Liverpool since Alex Ferguson retired – but it was the fifth of those to come under a Dutch manager. Louis van Gaal won all four of his league tussles with Liverpool managers (three with Brendan Rodgers, one with Jürgen Klopp), and now Erik ten Hag has won his first. So the Dutchmen have five wins out of five while all the other recent managers – yes you Jose, and you Ole, and you David Moyes, and especially you Ralf – have mustered one win out of 14 between them.
For Ten Hag, it should be a defining moment. It was a famous victory, pulled off against the odds, and he crowned it by saying something memorable on live TV. ‘It’s all about attitude,’ he said as he joined Sky’s semi-circle of pundits after the game. ‘There was communication, there was fighting spirit and especially there was team [unity]. And then you see what they can achieve, because they can fucking good play football.’ It was funny and endearing, and got funnier as Gary Neville sniggered like a schoolboy and the presenter, Dave Jones, hastened to apologise for ‘a little f-bomb dropped in there’. If Ten Hag swears on telly after a triumph over Liverpool, you wonder what his language is like when the lads are 4-0 down at half-time at Brentford.
He may have over-reacted to that embarrassment with his eight-mile Sunday-morning run, but Ten Hag got nearly all his decisions right for Liverpool. He was brave enough to bench both his captain, Harry Maguire, and his star player, Cristiano Ronaldo. He was pragmatic enough to park his belief in playing out from the back and to go for a third and fourth centre-forward option in three games (putting Marcus Rashford there before half-time, Anthony Martial afterwards). But he was principled enough to stick to his guns on other fronts: having only one defensive midfielder (Scott McTominay) with Christian Eriksen alongside him, keeping a back four when some managers would have added a third centre-back, and giving his full support to Lisandro Martinez, who fully repaid it by showing the most fighting spirit of all. Small as he is, Martinez was the biggest mentality monster on the field. His partnership with Varane was beautifully balanced - the one a grandee, elegant and unruffled, doing a better impression of Virgil Van Dijk than Van Dijk himself, the other a terrier whose bite is as bad as his bark.
Ten Hag’s game management was outstanding too. He used the five-subs rule to swap one Anthony (Elanga) for another (Martial) at half-time – and got an assist out of both. (Klopp, by contrast, sent on the right sub, Fabinho, at the wrong time, leaving Liverpool lumbered with two elderly midfielders for a full hour.) And just as Ten Hag had to carry most of the can for the Brentford shocker, so he gets most of the credit here. Every United starter did well. Tyrell Malacia, or Malissia as Neville calls him, had a daunting full debut, marking Mo Salah, but kept him just quiet enough. (Malacia just needs to work on his throw-ins, which were slow and tentative.) McTominay, after treading water for three years, finally located his ability to get the ball forward. Jadon Sancho, whose decision-making can be poor when he’s on the wing, radiated composure as he deposited not one but two opponents on their backsides (Milner! And even Alisson!) before coolly passing into the corner. Elanga, who was both teacher’s pet and a spare part under Rangnick, found his feet. Martial was neat, quick, strong at holding the ball up. Best of all, Marcus Rashford was himself again – rapid, lethal, rising to the big occasion, scoring the kind of goal that used to be his signature, and clicking with Martial and Bruno Fernandes in a way Ronaldo has only managed, in this spell at United, with Jesse Lingard.
The one player to put half a blot on his copybook was Fernandes, who was inspired one moment and idiotic the next. His passing was the sharpest it’s been for ages, but his handling of the ref was still juvenile. A captain’s job is to manage relations with the ref, yet Fernandes goes out of his way to cause annoyance – arguing too much with decisions, feigning injury in 50-50s, getting booked for a blatant dive. Captains have to have some dignity, and if Fernandes can’t deliver it the armband should go to Varane or Eriksen. But isn’t it great that that is United’s biggest problem right now. Next, they have to show that this team (with Martial edging out Elanga, and maybe Casemiro for McTominay) can do it on a sleepy Saturday lunchtime at St Mary’s. Every game United have played this season has been won by the underdog, which will do fine against Arsenal and Chelsea, but not at Southampton, Leicester or Palace. They still have some ground to make up – just not on Liverpool, who have taken over, for now, as the big flops in the Big Six.
Tim de Lisle writes about sport for The Guardian. If you’re on Twitter, do follow him and United Writing.