Game of groans
Outplayed by Wolves, United still managed to steal the points, thanks to Rapha Varane and the VAR
FIVE ASIDES Premier League: United 1, Wolves 0
The sound of the crowd should have been a buzz. Instead it was mostly a groan. The Wolves fans kept groaning as their team created chances they couldn’t begin to finish. The United fans kept groaning as their team gave the ball away (81 times!) and allowed more attempts on goal (23) than any visitors had managed in the league at Old Trafford since Chelsea in 2005. Wolves played well and lost; United played badly and won. This was their fifth successive league victory, a sequence that began with a home win over Wolves. But they were about as poor here as they had been in the opening game of last season, when they lost 2-1 at home to Brighton. That blow, you may just remember, was swiftly followed by a disastrous outing to London. We’d better lower our hopes for the trip to Tottenham on Saturday.
As they emerged for the second half, United went into a huddle and a senior player gave a pep talk. It wasn’t the new captain, Bruno Fernandes: it was Rapha Varane. He looked concerned and impassioned, a serial winner who could see that his team were in danger of losing. He may have mentioned that he himself had just missed their best chance, failing to get enough of his forehead on a fine corner from Fernandes. Half an hour later, he had a shot at redemption. It was just after another corner, so he was still up front. Another serial winner, Casemiro, had sneaked up to join him, sniffing an opportunity. Fernandes, taking Casemiro’s role in deep midfield, produced the pass of the night, a gorgeous perpendicular chip to Aaron Wan-Bissaka which lured the keeper, José Sá, out of his comfort zone. Wan-Bissaka hooked the ball across to Varane, who put it away and ran off roaring with relief. A minute earlier our own Rob Smyth, covering the action on the Guardian live blog, had written these words: ‘Wolves have been the better team tonight, particularly in the second half. It reeks of an unjust 1-0 defeat, doesn’t it.’
When Casemiro joined United, Erik ten Hag made him stand in the queue for a few games before he displaced Scott McTominay. Mason Mount, on the other hand, has waltzed straight into the starting XI, and last night he didn’t seem worth it. Picked as a pair of No 8s, he and Fernandes kept treading on each other’s toes. On the average-positions map at WhoScored.com, they ended up overlapping, like a pair of tiddlywinks. Even when Mount took a corner, Fernandes was out there with him, which is a terrible idea, ensuring that two neat finishers are not on the edge of the box. Mount was energetic but he didn’t have as much time or class as the man he had usurped, Christian Eriksen, who added creativity when Ten Hag belatedly brought him on in the 68th minute. He wasn’t even as good as Kobbie Mainoo, the teenager who started playing like an elder of the tribe on the summer tour. Mount will surely get there, but his role may have to be rethought.
The midfield didn’t work. The plan was clearly for Luke Shaw to join Casemiro in the pivot, Zinchenko-style, when United had the ball. But Shaw looked lost, perhaps because United seldom had the ball for more than 30 seconds, and the plan was abandoned after half an hour. Back in his natural habitat, marauding down the left, Shaw made Alejandro Garnacho more comfortable and United more threatening. But the switch left Casemiro exposed. Again and again he found Wolves’ runners simply running past him, treating the middle of the pitch like the wing. To be outrun once by a man named Matheus may be regarded as a misfortune; to let it happen four times looks like carelessness (on the part of the manager). Things were so bad that I found myself muttering ‘Get McTominay on!’. Ten Hag didn’t come round to that view until the dying minutes, which now take their time to die. But the single pivot hadn’t worked anything like as well for United as it does for City against clubs like Wolves – because Rodri is quicker than Casemiro, because John Stones coolly helps him out, because they don’t give the ball away cheaply, and because every single member of their squad is instilled with Pep Guardiola’s hunger.
Afterwards Ten Hag criticised the forwards, which was a bit harsh on Marcus Rashford. He ran hard, looked sharp, misplaced only two passes, completed more dribbles than anyone else after barely seeing the ball in the first 20 minutes, and combined well with Shaw, as so often, once Shaw was released from his prison in the pivot. You could tell that Rashford would rather have been on the left, but he took one for the team as neither Rasmus Hojlund nor Anthony Martial was fit to lead the line. (Where was Wout Weghorst when we needed him?) The true culprits in a wasteful display were the wingers. Both had had a promising pre-season, only to regress here. Garnacho went back to performing more sloppily when starting than when he comes off the bench to terrorise tired defenders. And Antony was at his infuriating worst, passing straight to opponents, shooting wide then pulling faces to suggest he’d gone close, and repeatedly taking too long to make a decision before making the wrong one. None of his crosses was half as good as Wan-Bissaka’s assist. The two of them don’t work as a pair because neither is naturally decisive. If Mount is going to stay in the starting XI, either he or Fernandes may have to replace Antony on the right, with Eriksen returning to resume his elderly but elegant partnership with Casemiro.
André Onana too made his competitive debut for United, and it was as mixed as Mount’s. His passing was no more confident than David de Gea’s until he did what he was signed to do and sent a rasping mid-length ball straight to Garnacho on the left. His shot-stopping was sharp, even if Wolves lent him a hand with their feeble marksmanship. And one of his decisions was a shocker, as he came for a cross, arrived too late, missed the ball by a mile and collided with Sala Kalajdzic. Thanks to a very easy-going VAR, he got away with it. And so did United.
Tim de Lisle writes about sport for The Guardian. If you’re on Twitter, do follow him and United Writing.