Five kids and one elderly gent
The win at Wolves belonged to United's teenagers – and Juan Mata, classy to the last
FIVE ASIDES Premier League: Wolves 1, United 2
It turns out you can win things with kids. Not just the league and the FA Cup – thanks again, Alan Hansen – but a low-octane last-day fixture at Molineux. There was, technically, nothing riding on it, but try telling that to the Wolves players, who wanted to give Nuno Espirito Santo the farewell win he deserved. Or to the 4500 Wolves fans present, who showed plenty of passion towards Mike Dean, after greeting the taking of the knee with some dismal booing. Or to the United Understudies, who were given the chance to tread the boards in a matinee following their first night against Leicester. They lost 2-1 then, a little unluckily, and won 2-1 today, a little luckily. But this team was even younger than that one, with Will Fish sneaking on for a last-minute debut. His first act on the field was to hold up five digits – Fish fingers – to signify both the formation United were switching to, and the number of teenagers they had fielded in the match.
Again, the reserves acquitted themselves well. Amad was cool and creative, Axel Tuanzebe was cool and commanding, and Alex Telles’s crosses were so classy that Dan James was inspired to impersonate him, sending over an immaculate left-foot outswinger for Anthony Elanga to head in like a bullet. It was only the 13th minute, and Elanga had already missed two chances, but still, for a beginner, one out of three ain’t bad. The movement from him and Amad gleamed with promise. They befuddled the Wolves defence and even occasionally confused themselves, as when they converged on the same blade of grass and tackled each other. The chance Amad set up for James, slipping him through with just the right weight on the ball, was one of the best non-assists of the season.
‘THIS WAS VAN DE BEEK’S
MOST ACCOMPLISHED
PERFORMANCE FOR UNITED,
FULL OF SELF-BELIEF’
The strings were being pulled by Juan Mata and Donny van de Beek. After Wolves’ well-worked goal (they always equalise) these two fine football brains conspired, with a little help from VAR, to create the winner – van de Beek drawing a clumsy foul with his silky persistence, Mata calmly slotting away the penalty as if Bruno Fernandes had never happened. When Mata was subbed, he had a tear in his eye – because this could be the last time – but still made a point of embracing both the teenagers who were coming on, Shola Shoretire and Hannibal Mejbri. What a gent he is. I hope the kids respond in kind by signing up for Common Goal. And I hope van de Beek gets more than three minutes on the field in the Europa final. This was his most accomplished performance for United, full of self-belief as well as his usual tidiness.
Only one United player looked out of his depth, and it wasn’t a teenager. It was Brandon Williams, a relative veteran of 20, with more than 50 first-team appearances behind him. He was sloppy and tentative, hanging deep for a United full back, and when he did race into the area, he blew a straighforward chance. Williams’s season has been a classic case of the difficult second album, with none of the sparkle of last year, or even the bustle. Like Marcus Rashford, he’s a right-footed player who seems far more at home on the left. In hindsight Ole Gunnar Solskjaer should have let him go out on loan in the January window, when Southampton were after him. In the right-back pecking order, he now stands below not just Diogo Dalot, returning from Milan, but Ethan Laird, who has done well at MK Dons. On the left, he’s third on the grid too, behind Telles and Luke Shaw. On both sides, the under-employed Tuanzebe can fill in if needed. Time to see if Southampton are still interested.
The trust Solskjaer placed in the kids was rewarded as they got United winning again, after an alarming mini-slump. And they also preserved the unbeaten away record. Of their 19 games on the road, United ended up winning 12 and drawing seven. If a few of the draws were frustrating (the five turgid 0-0s, the careless 2-2 at Leicester) and one was criminal (the 1-1 at the Hawthorns), several of the wins were barnstorming – the 2-0 at City, the 3-1 at Spurs, the 3-1 at West Ham and the 3-2 at Southampton from 2-0 down. And the record as a whole is a serious achievement. United are only the fourth side ever to be unbeaten on their travels throughout a top-flight season – following two Arsenal teams of the early 2000s, and Preston North End sometime in the Stone Age. They are the very first to do it without winning the title. Here, surely, lies the key to 2021/22: keep up the good work away, give or take the odd defeat, and find some proper consistency at home. If the crowds are back, the first of those things will be harder to achieve than it was this time round, while the second will be easier. Before that, all they have to do is win a trophy.