FIVE ASIDES Premier League: United 1, Leicester 1
For the 16th time in the league this season, United dropped points. Their performance was ragged, sloppy, incoherent until the last 25 minutes. The formation they started with was sheer folly. It was meant to be 4-2-2-2 but was often more like 4-6-0, and still Leicester’s bright young things ran rings round them. On the average-positions map, Paul Pogba, nominally one of the false nines, occupied the same spot as Scott McTominay, supposedly the holding midfielder. The other false nine, Bruno Fernandes, was left playing in two positions at once – No 9 and No 10 – at the end of a hard week spent propelling Portugal to the World Cup. In terms of morale, the formation was even worse, taking the players back to their mauling by Man City a month ago, when the shape and the front six were the same. Let’s face it: the Rangnick interregnum isn’t working. Under him, United have played 21 games in all competitions and failed to score a second goal in 15 of them. He keeps taking them back to square 1-1.
Rangnick has led United out of the FA Cup and the Champions League. He also led them back into the top four, to be fair, but now seems hell-bent on keeping them out of it. According to the prediction model at 538.com, United’s chances of finishing fourth have shrivelled to 4pc. For all his professorial air, Rangnick is no Einstein: he keeps picking the same players and expecting a different result.
When Cristiano Ronaldo fell sick, it was glaringly obvious that Marcus Rashford had to play, as the only other member of the squad with much experience as a centre-forward. And Joe Hugill, who has five goals in his last five games for the Under-18s, needed to be on the bench, stepping up the way Rashford himself did six years ago. You wonder if Rangnick even knows about Midtjylland 2016. For Rashford, after his slump, this game could have been a fresh start: he has scored against Leicester six seasons running. Yet again, when handed a chance to pump up his tyres, Rangnick opted to deflate him.
As soon as Rashford came on, in the 65th minute, United improved. His pace instantly won a corner, his pressing played a part in Fred’s goal and he might well have grabbed the winner, had Anthony Elanga not shown his inexperience and needlessly got in Rashford’s way when in an offside position. Afterwards Rangnick bemoaned Elanga’s decision-making. But hang on, who picked Elanga, and left him on for the whole match when Juan Mata, with all his craft and composure, was sitting on the bench? A boss’s first job is to take responsibility.
When he arrived in December, Rangnick gave United brought some stability, steadying the ship and stiffening the defence. Now it’s hard to work out what value he is adding. You can see that the players don’t believe in him, and he’s not giving them a reason to. There’s still time, just, to save our season – though it will have to be done the hard way, by beating both Arsenal and Chelsea, and it will only happen if United send out an SOS. It’s time to bring back the man who was in charge for the win over Arsenal and the draw at Chelsea: Michael Carrick.