FIVE ASIDES Champions League: Villarreal 0, United 2
This game was all about Michael Carrick, the man left holding the baby. His role as the caretaker keeping the seat warm for the next caretaker shows that the Glazers and Ed Woodward are taking no care of anyone. All he can do is play the part with dignity and decency, and he is doing that. His press conference beforehand suggested he might be Solskjaer the second, but that wasn’t the case, except that he too relied rather heavily on some sharp saves from David de Gea. This performance was more like something from the man Solskjaer kept harking back to, but seldom emulated – Alex Ferguson. The approach was clear, organised, careful in a good way. Carrick had one job: to stop United being a shambles again. And he managed it, although they were still unconvincing in their own half. Villarreal kept slicing through the midfield, and if they had had Gerard Moreno, they would surely have found the net.
Where Carrick was canny was in changing the formation. Knowing that Unai Emery gives his players detailed dossiers on their opponents, Carrick ditched both of Solskjaer’s favoured formations, 4-2-3-1 and 3-3-2-2, and replaced them with two others: 4-3-3 with the ball, 4-4-2 without. Donny van de Beek joined Scott McTominay in the engine room, adding much-needed finesse, but Fred was only with them in the middle when United were attacking: otherwise he was on the left, chugging up and down like one of those trucks that spread grit on slippery roads. Carrick was tacitly accepting that neither Cristiano Ronaldo nor Anthony Martial could be relied upon to do any defending. Which made it puzzling that Martial was picked. Jesse Lingard would have been just as likely to score, and far more willing to track back. The 4-4-2 is also the best bet for thwarting Chelsea at the weekend: the three times they have failed to win at home this season have come against teams playing 4-4-2, either the old-school kind (Burnley, Southampton) or the Guardiola twist (Man City). United have the players to do a Pep, with Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho playing as advanced wingers, pinning the flying wing-backs into their own half, and Lingard or Bruno Fernandes as the false nine.
United are through to the knock-outs, and it feels like a mixed blessing. Young Boys, who started their slump in September, did them a favour by snatching a draw with Atalanta, so United will top the group even if they lose to Young Boys again (a possibility that cannot be ruled out). Coming top is the boost United’s battered morale needed, and it gives them a sniff of a gentle draw in the last 16. After the game, the prediction service 538.com gave them a 49pc chance of reaching the quarter-finals, ranking them seventh among the clubs left in the competition (though some will leapfrog them once qualification is sealed). It even gives them a 1pc chance of lifting the trophy, with Carrick – or Ernesto Valverde, or Ralf Rangnick, or Uncle Tom Cobbleigh – playing the part of Roberto Matteo. By qualifying, though, United have lost their most realistic hope of landing some silverware. Their old friend the Europa League is easier to win than the FA Cup, and the fact that they have now beaten Villarreal twice shows that they should have pipped them to it in May.
Cristiano Ronaldo did what Cristiano Ronaldo does. He pottered about for 75 minutes, then produced a masterly finish. Afterwards plenty of people pointed out that his goals had been responsible for all ten of United’s Champions League points. Nobody added that they’ve all come so late that he may as well not be in the starting XI. Carrick brought the best out of Bruno Fernandes last night by being brave enough to relegate him to the bench. Could he do the same with Ronaldo? If so, the place to try it is in the league, where Ronaldo has only one goal in his last seven games, and he endangers United’s defence by being too posh to press.
Sancho, meanwhile, is finally getting there, after living up to his reputation as a slow starter. He had begun to find his feet in the second half at Watford, as van de Beek fed him some delicious long balls. Here, helped by the partial 4-4-2, he played like a proper winger for the first time in a United shirt, staying wide, beating his full back, putting in one cross of rasping promise, and finding himself on the end of two great chances. The first, set up by Fernandes with a wily one-two, sent him through the middle with only the keeper to beat, and he should have scored. The second was created by Marcus Rashford, racing away down the left, with Fernandes adding a deflection that may not even have been deliberate. Sancho had time to tee the ball up and thumped it into the top corner as if he was Mason Greenwood in disguise. It was only the sixth goal this season from United’s wide strikers, following three from Rashford, one from Martial, and one from Greenwood (whose other three goals came when he was centre-forward, before Ronaldo’s return). At least one of them is going to have to hit top form soon.