FIVE ASIDES Champions League: FC Copenhagen 4, United 3
Is the glass half-full, or half-empty? Are United half-hopeless, or half-decent? For 40 minutes in Copenhagen, you could have sworn they’d made a breakthrough. They were joined-up, bossing it, even enjoying themselves. The first goal was a thing of beauty, a proper team move involving six players, both flanks, quick feet and quick thinking: Diogo Dalot going on a run down the left, Bruno Fernandes making the big switch, Marcus Rashford showing good control and slipping a perpendicular pass down the right, Aaron Wan-Bissaka going on the overlap and playing the best left-foot ball of his career, Scott McTominay storming to the byline and drilling in a cross, Rasmus Hojlund waiting for the tap-in like a man returning home. Here at last was the progress Erik ten Hag keeps talking about. And all in the third minute of the game.
United cruised to 2-0 with a classic counter-attack, and then everything changed when Rashford was sent off. It was definitely on the harsh side. The ref hadn’t even reached for a yellow card. If the VAR was just applying the law, the law is an ass for treating naivety – a forward’s idea of defending – as if it were malice. Putting Rashford on the right had worked: he looked sharper, formed a better rapport with Wan-Bissaka (who seems to have quietly gone on an assertiveness course) than with the assorted stand-in left-backs, and defended so diligently that his average position, for once, was on the halfway line.
When the red card came, Rashford reacted well. You can’t be prosecuted for smiling in disbelief, and that was his widest smile for some time. But with that one moment of naivety he breathed life into Copenhagen, who soon bounced back to 2-2. After half-time United rose to the challenge again, keeping the ball better with ten men than they often do with 11. At 3-2 up, they really should have been able to see the game out. But for the listen ten minutes – when United prevail against lesser teams and capitulate to stronger ones – even the defenders were defending naively.
Ten Hag didn't help with a baffling substitution, replacing Hojlund with Mason Mount. This was a bad idea for about four reasons. First, United’s best hope of a clinching goal lay in Hojlund’s pace, presence and hunger for a home-town hat-trick. Second, when you’re down to ten men, there’s no room for a false nine. Third, Mount is so out of form that he’s apt to get lost even when playing in midfield. Here, occupying his fourth different position in four months at United, he had only three touches, although he did top the pass-completion chart – with two out of two. Fourth, there was no need to keep Hojlund fresh for Luton: he’s been so toothless in the league that it would be perfectly reasonable to put him on the bench.
As United’s last group game is against the unbeatables of Bayern Munich, the trip to Galatasaray now looks very much like a knock-out. It’s on Wednesday 29 November, in the early slot at 5.45pm GMT. United have never won there; in fact, they’ve never scored there (two 0-0s and a 1-0 defeat). They will need to change that to squeeze through to the Round of 16. But there is another option. Coming third in the group would not be a bad outcome. You and I might groan at the thought of being back in the Thursday-Sunday routine, but the Europa League is one of only two trophies United could plausibly win this season, alongside the FA Cup. Let’s face it: with the honourable exception of Hojlund, this depleted team are not up to the Champions League. If you keep losing by the odd goal in five or seven, you’re effectively holding up a banner saying SEE YOU IN THE EUROPA!!.
Tim de Lisle, a United fan since the days when they failed to qualify for the Fairs Cup, is the editor of United Writing and a sportswriter at The Guardian. For his work here, he has been shortlisted for an Editor of the Year award by the British Society of Magazine Editors.