From a honeymoon to a puddle of angst
Just when everything was going smoothly, United have lost three games out of four
FIVE ASIDES Premier League: United 0, Aston Villa 1
United should be top of the table tonight. Chelsea lost, Liverpool drew. The win that almost everyone expected would have taken United two points clear. Not that Villa are a pushover, far from it, but United should have been able to absorb their pressing, as Chelsea did last weekend, and then exploit the gaps at the back. Instead they created dozens of chances – 28 shots! – and managed to convert none of them. Villa were wasteful too, missing about three open goals. If they got lucky when the VAR failed to spot Ollie Watkins impeding David de Gea, they were good value overall for the win. And United were left kicking themselves after Bruno Fernandes, usually so clinical with his penalties, placed this one in Row Z. Was he put off by having Cristiano Ronaldo, one of the world’s best penalty-takers, breathing down his neck? If so, he should have given him the ball. Had the roles been reversed, it’s safe to say that Ronaldo – even when having an off day – would have coped with the pressure.
Statman Dave saw it coming. Not the missed penalty, but the fact that this game was a banana skin. On Friday he did one of his one-minute presentations on where the game would be won and lost, and he identified Villa’s formation, 3-5-2, as a danger. Three of United’s previous four league defeats had come against teams with a back three (or five) – Leicester, Sheffield United and Arsenal. It’s not so much the three at the back that’s the issue, it’s the two at the front, though that didn’t apply in Arsenal’s case. United’s defenders, never that comfortable playing out from the back, find it harder still when pressed by a pair of strikers. It’s the sort of problem that shouldn’t trouble top-class players.
This time two weeks ago, United were top of the table after thumping Newcastle. They had just renewed their vows with Ronaldo and were enjoying a second honeymoon. Since then, almost everything that could go wrong has gone wrong. They’ve lost three games out of four and failed to score in the past two, despite having 55 attempts on goal. It’s not quite a crisis, as all these dents can be repaired bar the exit from the League Cup, which is always won by City anyway. But it is a worry. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer now badly needs two victories in the next week: against Villareal, who have conceded just one goal in five meetings with United, and then Everton, who are in ominously good form under Rafa Benitez. Somehow United have turned a storming start to the season into a puddle of angst.
This was meant to be the easy bit. When the fixtures were published, it looked as if United had seven relatively straightforward games followed by four challenging ones. Given the way the season has gone, that view may need to be modified slightly – it’s more a case of four easy games (Leeds, Southampton, Wolves, Newcastle) followed by four tougher ones (West Ham, Villa, Everton, Leicester) and then three big ones (Liverpool, Spurs, City). The good news is that United have remained invincible away, at least in the league: the games at Leicester and Spurs should both be winnable. The bad news is that they face Liverpool and City at home, where they lost to both last season. With the sparkling performances against Leeds and Newcastle, it felt as if Old Trafford was becoming dreamland again. This week’s flops at the hands of West Ham and Villa have been the stuff of nightmares, or rather lockdown – the sort of thing visiting teams pulled off when they didn’t have 70,000 people to silence.
You had to feel for Solskjaer, who lost Luke Shaw and then Harry Maguire to injury. That reduced him to one attacking substitution – though he could have been braver and moved Scott McTominay into the back four when Maguire limped off, which would have meant getting Edinson Cavani on the field for half an hour rather than 15 minutes, and having the option of a late burst of Jesse Lingard. Solskjaer could have been braver still and started with just one of McFred rather than both. Yes, John McGinn is good, but he’s not N’Golo Kante. More broadly, Solskjaer could be taking a different tack on selection, using this deeply gifted squad to be more fluid and less formulaic. Alex Ferguson, in his later years, used to make three or four changes for most games. He didn’t have a first XI so much as a first XVI, which must have made a right mess of his opponents’ whiteboards. Many managers would have picked Diogo Dalot to start at right-back today, now that Villa no longer have Jack Grealish, but you just knew Solskjaer would revert to Aaron Wan-Bissaka. He’s often been good at coming up with bespoke plans for big games, but he’s often frustratingly predictable in the smaller ones. And today he paid the price.