Good result, awful performance

And Amorim's press conference afterwards was even worse

EIGHT ASIDES Premier League: Fulham 0, United 1

Lisandro Martinez spent his first two years in the Premier League trying to be Norman Hunter – the centre-back on a mission to Bite Yer Legs. With his new-year resolution for 2025, he seems to have vowed to be Josko Gvardiol too – the guy who steals forward from the left side of defence, joins the attack and makes something happen when it’s most needed. His first goal this season gave United the lead at Anfield; his second gave them a win at Craven Cottage. And both came from moves that he had begun himself by stepping up from the back line to snuff out a counter attack.

On Merseyside, Martinez and his team fully deserved the goal. On the bank of the Thames, they didn’t. The shot relied on a piece of outrageous fortune, a loopy deflection that lifted it just high enough to brush past Bernd Leno’s outstretched fingertips. Even Martinez’s presence on the field, in the 78th minute, needed some luck. A quarter of an hour earlier he had got away with a two-footed stamp on Adama Traore as they resumed their theatrical spat from the first night of the season. The ref, Anthony Taylor, didn’t even give Martinez a yellow card, perhaps because he was the one who went down in apparent pain and Traore is built like a truck. The VAR, Jarred Gillett, probably wanted to award a yellow but, bizarrely, the only card a VAR holds in his hand is a red one, and he didn’t see Taylor’s failure to reach for that as a clear and obvious error.

This was a good result but an awful performance, which would have been flattered even if the score had remained 0-0. Martinez’s long shot was United’s only attempt on target as they scraped their way to 0.25 expected goals. Fulham, who managed 0.67, had better chances but blew them, again and again, by blasting over the bar. At least Fulham looked like a team, whereas United went back to treating each other like strangers. They kept giving the ball away - Amad five times, the other wide or wideish players (Alejandro Garnacho, Diogo Dalot and Noussair Mazraoui) seven each, Bruno Fernandes 19 times, André Onana 20. The whole team, subs included, managed just four shot-creating actions, the same as Sander Berge on his own. And he’s a defensive midfielder.

We knew Rasmus Højlund was out of form, but he went from bad to worse. His touch was heavy, his hold-up play non-existent: he kept backing into Joachim Andersen or Calvin Bassey and not even bothering to try to head the ball himself. It was obvious that he should have started the midweek game against Rangers (because the European stage is the one place where he has shone for United), while Joshua Zirkzee should have started here (because he scored against Fulham in August), but Ruben Amorim got them the wrong way round. Both, at the moment, are barely good enough for the bench, since they’re struggling to make anything happen. Perhaps Martinez can give them some tips: he now has 21 shots in all competitions this season and is threatening to overtake Højlund, who has just 25.

On the plus side, United actually kept a clean sheet! The first for 13 games. And all the centre-backs did well. Matthijs de Ligt often looks unconvincing, but he makes Amorim’s United more secure – the three successive shockers in December came when he was off sick. When he went off, Leny Yoro was equally solid and more fluent on the ball, completing all 13 of his passes (he may be worth a go at centre-forward). Harry Maguire, after his wobble against Cyriel Dessers of Rangers, was back to his commanding form of recent months, and might have been Player of the Match had Martinez’s shot not looped in. The moment of the match came from Toby Collyer with his header off the line, further evidence of his quick brain and dancing feet. But Mazraoui and Dalot were both poor, with the one making a terrible choice as he sent a failed cross towards the other. Neither was half as threatening as Antonee Robinson, who was officially playing as a full-back, not a wing-back. When Mazraoui and Dalot are both on the field, which is most of the time, we should stop portraying Amorim’s formation as a 3-4-2-1: it’s really a 5-2-2-1.

Could this ugly win be the turning point? At a pinch. United, who began the game 14th, have now soared to 12th. They are 99.9pc safe from marking the 50th anniversary of their last relegation with another one, according to Opta, which rates their chances of going down as 0.1pc. But before we start celebrating, that’s exactly the same as their chances of making the Champions League places (there are expected to be five of them this time). Opta still expects United to stay in the lower half of the table: according to its projections, their most likely finish is where they are now, 12th. The bookies, or the betting public, have them finishing 10th. If they carry on playing like this, Opta may well have the better of that little contest.

The win wasn’t the only ugly thing United dished up. Amorim’s response at the press conference afterwards when asked about Marcus Rashford – saying he’d rather pick the goalkeeping coach, who is 63 – was even sillier than his line about the team being ‘maybe United’s worst ever’. For weeks he had been reckless in his handling of Rashford but at least diplomatic in his comments, which mostly consisted of ‘we’ll see’. On Sunday night he suddenly lashed out like an angry teenager. Even Alex Ferguson, who had far more authority, made sure he only ever did that in private. It’s a terrible way for a manager to treat any player, let alone one who has been on United’s books for 20 years, who has stayed loyal to the club through ten senior seasons, who may not always have tracked back but has often played through the pain, who has made 426 appearances, who has scored 138 goals – and earned an MBE for his efforts on behalf of hungry schoolchildren. Amorim has gone from picking Rashford in two of his first three United XIs to treating him like dirt. He has been shifty about the reasons: at first it was ‘how you eat, how you dress, every detail’ and now it’s ‘training reasons’, at a time when Rashford has been doing extra training.

Rashford has been left out of 10 of United’s last 11 games altogether and was on the bench for the other one, against Newcastle – which proves that Amorim does still prefer him to the goalie coach. So that’s essentially an unofficial 10-match suspension, on full pay, for a player who earns about a million pounds a month. At Craven Cottage Amorim ended up naming a bench that had only one forward on it, in Zirkzee, and not a single winger, now that Antony has gone out on loan to Real Betis. And then he had the gall to complain about the lack of pace available to him. This is abysmal management. It does nothing for United, whose hand will be weakened as they try to loan or sell Rashford. It does nothing for for Rashford, to whom Amorim has a duty of care. It does nothing for the other players’ morale: no wonder all those passes went astray). It doesn’t even do anything for Amorim himself, who, after getting an easy ride from the press, awoke yesterday to find both The Sunday Times and The Guardian beginning to wonder if he’s any good. His remarks are the kind of thing new bosses go in for when they’re trying to look tough, but if they’re going to be tough on others, they also have to be tough on themselves. Reflecting on the ‘worst team’ outburst, Amorim said: ‘I’m only young.’ That was another shocker. He was handing himself an excuse that he had not extended to the players, who are all younger than him. Today Amorim turns 40. We can only wish him a happy birthday, and hope he sees that it’s time to put away childish things.

Tim de Lisle is the editor of United Writing and a sportswriter for The Guardian. He’s been supporting United for long enough to remember some of George Best’s suspensions.