Madness, they call it madness
In a match that was shambles squared, United showed great spirit but Erik ten Hag was unable to fix their glaring flaws
FIVE ASIDES Premier League: Chelsea 4, United 3
What does it take to blow a season? Two games in west London. Two precious leads that just needed a little protection. Three goals conceded – one in the 99th minute, one in the 100th and one in the 101st (you couldn’t make them up). Five points lost. And, with them, any realistic hope of making the Champions League.
Madness, they call it madness. All this year, United have played as if they are trying to engineer chaos, and in Chelsea they met their match. About 13 years ago these clubs were the big two in the Premier League; these days, while still highly watchable, they’re both flawed, naive and flaky. When they collided, it was chaos squared. United scored three of the four goals that came in open play, and two of them (the second and third) were fine team efforts. But they didn’t deserve to win because they conceded their now-customary 25 shots (28, in fact), gave away two penalties, and stopped creating chances after 70 minutes. They didn’t deserve to lose either, because they showed great spirit in coming back from 2-0 down to lead 3-2. It should have ended 3-3, and it would have had Cole Palmer’s last-ditch shot not taken that cruel deflection off Scott McTominay – adding insult to injury time.
United have now lost three of their past five league games and, on this evidence, they will almost certainly lose the next one. A well-run team would not be wilting on the medium-sized occasion. People like Casemiro and Varane, serial winners with Real Madrid, should have been telling the others that they had to beat Fulham before heading for the Etihad, and they had to beat Brentford and Chelsea before facing Liverpool again. Maybe they did tell them. Maybe nobody listens to the wise old heads. Or maybe the boss, for all his decency, is just not as inspiring, as charismatic, as commanding as a top manager has to be.
Afterwards Erik ten Hag bemoaned United’s decision-making, and he forgot to mention himself. When the midfield kept being sliced open, because Casemiro was off the pace, Kobbie Mainoo was less tidy than usual and Bruno Fernandes was playing almost as a striker, Ten Hag did nothing to zip it up. When United needed a cool head, he again left Christian Eriksen out in the cold. He does get credit for picking Antony, who produced the best pass of his blighted United career, an outside-of-the-foot cross that curled back beautifully to hand the onrushing Alejandro Garnacho a simple header. But Ten Hag also placed rather too much faith in Rasmus Højlund, barely visible again after an ill-timed injury, and spurned Amad, who showed against Liverpool – even before the winner – that he can keep calm and carry the ball out of danger. The bottom line is that United had some glaring problems at Brentford (listed here) and they were still there at Chelsea.
To lose two senior centre-backs in a week may be considered a misfortune. To lose four looks like carelessness. Were Rapha Varane and Jonny Evans rushed back after injury? We can only hazard a guess, but it wouldn’t be the first time – look at what happened to Luke Shaw in February. United played the last 35 minutes at Stamford Bridge with a centre-back pairing of Harry Maguire and Willy Kambwala, who did quite well in the circumstances. Not one of Chelsea’s goals was the fault of a centre-back: the first was on Casemiro for failing to track Conor Gallagher, the second came from Antony’s foul on Marc Cucurella, the third was just bad luck as Diogo Dalot slipped and fell into Noni Madueke, and for the fourth, one of the forwards, probably Mason Mount, should have followed Palmer as he drifted towards the corner flag. Mount, who had put in another classy cameo, did react faster than anyone else in a red shirt, though at the moment that’s not saying a great deal. Evans, had he still been there, might have spotted the danger, but United were shellshocked from the penalty a minute earlier. Madness, they call it madness.
Tim de Lisle is the editor of United Writing and a sportswriter for The Guardian, where he covered this game as it unfolded.