FIVE ASIDES Premier League: United 2, Fulham 1
In Shakespeare, you know an act is coming to an end when the lines start rhyming. In the 2022/23 football season, the sign that an act was ending came when United beat Fulham. It happened in the last game before the World Cup, with Garnacho’s late winner. It happened in the last game before the only international break we had after that, with Mitrovic’s meltdown in the cup. And it happened on the final day of the Premier League, with Mitrovic missing a penalty and the astonishing sight of David de Gea actually saving one prompting another United comeback.
On a day when even Erik ten Hag could see the need to rotate, United’s stars were mostly stand-ins. Victor Lindelof, so assured ever since he stepped up to replace Lisandro Martinez, was playing the ball forward fast, as if deputising for Michael Carrick. Jadon Sancho, another fringe player finishing the season strongly, was making good decisions in wide open spaces as well as in traffic. And Fred, after a patchy start to the game, was having his finest half-hour in five years at United. First he created Sancho’s equaliser with a surging run. We’ve seen that before, whereas we’ve never seen what came next: a surgical pass, dissecting the defence and sending Bruno Fernandes through. For once the Fred chant was accurate as well as affectionate: Fred, Fred will tear you apart again. If this was his final start for United, he should change clubs more often, because he knows how to leave the crowd wanting more.
It was typical of Ten Hag’s team that, although they were much the better side, the win came by a narrow margin. They’ve had 13 league wins by a single goal, as against ten by two or more. But the point is that they have something – a blend of spirit, spark, experience and talent – that gets them over the line more often than not. This was their 23rd league win of the season, up seven from last year. They finished third in the table, up three from last year. They collected 75 points, up 17 from last year – the biggest improvement by any club apart from Newcastle (up 22), and a sharp contrast to some of their old foes (Liverpool down 25, Chelsea down 30). They won a trophy, up one from last year. They may even add another, if half the City squad go down with an unfortunate illness.
‘Top four and a trophy’ has been the mantra for months. And now they've done it. It sounds simple, but can you remember when United last managed it? The answer is 13 years ago, when they won the Premier League and the League Cup. Even in the last three years of the Ferguson era, they were dominant only in the league: the domestic cups were a catalogue of calamities, which usually came in the fourth or fifth round. After Ferguson retired, United flipped and became a cup team – as long as they were struggling in the league. The trophies they won in 2016 and 2017, under Louis van Gaal and Jose Mourinho, came laced with league disappointment. Ten Hag is the first manager since Ferguson to make United consistently competitive.
They have their bad days, but never more than two of them on the trot. After the double wobble in early May, at Brighton and West Ham, a Solskjaer team might well have checked out for the rest of the season. Ten Hag’s team, knowing they needed to win three out of the next four games to be sure of returning to the Champions League, won the lot. He’s done so well.
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. If you received this piece by email, please feel free to forward it to the nearest Red.