FIVE ASIDES Premier League: Forest 0, United 2
You wait six months for a Premier League goal involvement from Antony, then two come at once. He scored his first league goal in 15 games since his early flurry – and followed it with his first league assist since he arrived in September. Of the two, the assist was the more impressive. The goal was a tap-in, created for him by Anthony Martial and Bruno Fernandes: all Antony had to do was turn up at the far post. It’s a manoeuvre that is often beyond him – if he’d done it regularly in this game, he would have had a hat-trick – so the fact that he managed it is very welcome. It’s like that parable in the New Testament about the sinner that repenteth being like a lost sheep that returneth to the flock. The assist, on the other hand, took some doing. United stitched together a swift sequence of passes and then Antony took several touches with his left foot, usually a sure sign that nothing is about to happen. Instead he slipped a sharp through ball to the onrushing Diogo Dalot. Who knew? All Antony was waiting for was a right-footed left-back arriving on the underlap.
‘Games are won in midfield,’ Lisandro Martinez said the other day, before his season came to a painful end. At the City Ground United proved his point. Fernandes and Christian Eriksen were top-class, playing so authoritatively that Forest didn’t seem to have a midfield at all. Eriksen was only there as an understudy, standing in for Marcel Sabitzer who had strained a groin in the warm-up, but as Erik ten Hag said afterwards, if you’re forced to pick Eriksen it’s hardly a disadvantage. He has so much time, so much composure – and such a good rapport with Fernandes that, after an hour or so, the two of them had played more successful passes to each other in their opponents’ half than the whole Forest team.
When Eriksen and Fernandes start alongside Casemiro, United don’t lose. Their record together, as Samuel Luckhurst of the Manchester Evening News spotted, is played 17, won 15, drawn 2. Eriksen’s return to the pivot gave Fernandes an unaccustomed pleasure: the chance to play in his natural position, at No 10. He pulled the strings, ran the show and warmed the heart. Now, for once, the hardest-working man in show business can have a week off, as he’s suspended for the trip to Sevilla.
Another start for Harry Maguire, another win – his 11th on the trot. Yet it could have been so different. When Maguire picked up a silly yellow card for his first tangle with Taiwo Awoniyi, there were shades of the England match a couple of years ago when he got booked in the fifth minute. On that occasion, yellow turned to red as Maguire repeated his error (going in studs-up) 25 minutes later. This time he recovered well – though his luck may have evened out when a corner landed on his arm and no penalty was given. It helped that he had Eriksen on his side. That night at Wembley in October 2020, Eriksen was the captain of the opposition and the scorer of the only goal.
United showed the depth of their squad. They were missing four regulars – Martinez, Rapha Varane, Luke Shaw and Marcus Rashford – but you wouldn’t have known it. Dalot, Maguire and Victor Lindelof all stepped up from the bench and did well; only Jadon Sancho struggled, and Rashford has given him an exceptionally hard act to follow. United now have more points than they collected in the whole of last season. With Newcastle and Spurs both losing, their chances of finishing third have risen in one weekend from 41 per cent to 60. They still don’t batter the small fry the way City do, but they have ended up beating Forest 10-0 this season: it’s just taken them four games.
Tim de Lisle is the editor of United Writing and a sportswriter for The Guardian. If you’re on Twitter, do follow him and United Writing. His latest piece is about falling in love with newspapers (thanks to football) and whether they can survive.