Crisis? Half-crisis!
United have plenty of problems – but the results are not as bad as they look
COMMENT Premier League: United 1, Brighton 3
‘United in crisis,’ said The Sunday Times. ‘Bad to worse,’ observed The Observer. ‘WHAT A SHAMBLES,’ shrieked The Mail on Sunday. Are the papers right? Are United in crisis, yet again?
Well, yes and no. United have four problems, all quite different. There are the parasitical owners who say they’re selling the club but seem to be doing all they can to dissuade anyone from buying it. There are the dismal allegations against Antony and Mason Greenwood, handled unconvincingly by the executives. There is Erik ten Hag’s uncharacteristic spat with Jadon Sancho, playing out in public. And then there are the results.
United have lost three of their first five matches for the first time in the Premier League era. They have shipped two or more goals in four league games running for the first time since 1979. On Saturday they lost to a Brighton team that had cost £17m, or about one-fifth of what United shelled out for Antony alone. It’s not absurd to argue that these four dramas add up to a crisis.
But let’s have a closer look at those results. The three defeats all came against teams that are now in the top five, two of them away. The Brighton imbroglio was the first time United had lost at Old Trafford for a year. They always lose to Brighton in the league (four times in a row now). All five fixtures were repeats from last season, when they yielded two wins, a draw and two losses. This time round, the only difference is that a draw at Spurs has turned into a defeat. So United are just one point down on the same fixtures last season, when they finished third. Crisis, what crisis?
Wobbly as they were against Wolves, feckless as they were for the first five minutes against Forest, United have yet to drop a point against the Premier League’s bottom 15. (Chelsea, their neighbours in the table, have already dropped eight.) United’s next four league games are Burnley away, Palace home, Brentford home and Sheffield United away. If they can win three of those and draw the other one, they’ll have 16 points from nine games and the patient will no longer be in a critical condition.
The big worry is that they have been so easy to slice open. Even Wolves were able to waltz through United’s midfield. Something had to be done about that for the visit of Brighton, whose midfield is a machine that doesn’t mind if they sell their star players. Ten Hag switched to a diamond, and for 20 minutes it seemed that he had struck gold.
Scott McTominay was there to add a crunch to the creativity of Casemiro and Christian Eriksen. Marcus Rashford, starting further in, kept bursting into the box, Sergio Reguilon struck up an instant rapport with him, and Rasmus Hojlund maintained the promise of his cameo at Arsenal. United should have been two up.
With Casemiro having a lean spell, United’s most important player may now be a man who has never played a minute for them: Sofyan Amrabat
But then Roberto De Zerbi, who is a chess player as well as a man manager, made his move. He spread his centre-backs wide to make it hard for United’s front two-and-a-half to press. That allowed the Brighton full-backs to turn into wing-backs, revelling in the space left by the lack of wingers. United’s not-very-wide midfielders, McTominay and Eriksen, were repeatedly overrun. Every Brighton counter-attack looked like producing a goal and about half of them did.
United discovered that you can borrow Real Madrid’s formation, but it’s not much use if you can’t hold onto the ball. Ten Hag, out-managed, made one successful substitution (yielding a memorable first goal from Hannibal Mejbri), but then resorted to throwing on extra forwards like Ole Gunnar Solskjaer on a bad day.
Casemiro was too easy to bypass and Lisandro Martinez was far from his usual fire-fighting self. Both had just flown back from international duty in Latin America. So had Pervis Estupinan of Brighton, and De Zerbi left him out. Ten Hag may have missed a trick there.
With Casemiro having a lean spell, United’s most important player may now be a man who has never played a minute for them: Sofyan Amrabat. They badly need him to step straight in and be the shield in front of the back four. It’s lucky he looks like the kind of guy who doesn’t mind a bit of pressure.
Before that relatively gentle run of league games, United have to go to Munich on Wednesday. They have every chance of getting battered by Bayern. But then they also have nothing to lose. As Solskjaer used to say, you only need ten points from your six group games in the Champions League, and United would not have expected any of the ten to come from this opening game. A draw would feel like a win, a win would feel like a triumph, and even a narrow defeat might come as a relief. What is more important is whether we see any improvement in the performance – from the team, and the manager.
Tim de Lisle, a United fan since the days of Ian Ure, is the editor of United Writing and a sportswriter for The Guardian. If you’re on Twitter, do follow him and United Writing.