FIVE ASIDES Europa League, quarter-final, second leg: Sevilla 3, United 0 (agg. 5-2)
Thursday was a day of spectacular implosions. First it was the SpaceX rocket that went up in smoke, then it was United’s European hopes. SpaceX said the rocket had experienced ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’, which sounds very much like what happened to United’s defence. In plain English, they fell apart. David de Gea made not one awful blunder but two. Harry Maguire called for the ball at a moment when he should have been shouting ‘Man on!’ at himself. To turn a 2-0 lead into a 5-2 defeat is quite something, yet United made it look inevitable. When they are bad, they are so bad that you wonder if they’re being managed by Elon ten Musk. To paraphrase Gary Lineker, Europa League football is simple: you play for seven months, then Sevilla win.
It’s not rocket science – in fact, it’s more like cricket writing. United in 2022-23 are not a bad team. They’re a good team with a tendency to collapse, a syndrome English cricket lovers know all too well. Brentford away, City away, Liverpool away, and now Sevilla away: four fiascos featuring 23 goals, only three of them at the right end. This time, to be fair, United did have a decent excuse. The starting XI was missing five of their mainstays – their three most adept defenders (Rapha Varane, Lisandro Martinez, Luke Shaw), their leading scorer by a mile (Marcus Rashford) and their driving force (Bruno Fernandes). Of all the clubs in the Premier League, probably only two could have shrugged off a quintuple blow like that: City, because their squad is so deep and adaptable, and Chelsea, because whoever starts for them, they’re always hopeless.
The single biggest miss was Fernandes. United, as Erik ten Hag was honest enough to admit, were devoid of passion and composure. Fernandes would not have made them more composed, but he would certainly have been impassioned. This was only the third match he had missed in a season of phenomenal industry. The first was the 1-0 defeat by Real Sociedad back in September, the only other cup match United have lost this season (out of 22: final tally W18, D2, L2). The other mitigating factor is that this was Sevilla. They own the Europa League, and although they forgot it for 80 minutes at Old Trafford, they remembered just in time to take advantage of United’s injuries and their miscalculation with the subs. From that moment on European experience told, much as it does in the Champions League. Playing the second leg at home, Sevilla drew a crowd of 40,000 that felt more like 80,000. With their relentless singing and dancing, the home fans called the tune and, just like at Anfield, United couldn’t face the music.
This has to be the end for some of the players. Let Maguire go back to Leicester, if they escape the drop. Let De Gea go back to Spain: he’s still a great shot-stopper, but he’s shaky at corners and too old to learn the new tricks involved in passing out from the back. United don’t even need to buy a replacement – they just have to make peace with Dean Henderson. Let Aaron Wan-Bissaka go back to Palace: he has improved, but not enough, and when United’s best chance of the first half fell to him, you just knew he would plop it straight at the keeper. Let Wout Weghorst go back to Besiktas: he’s endlessly willing, but when United’s best chance of the second half fell to him, you just knew he would take too long over it.
After their first three fiascos, United bounced back strongly. But the battering at Anfield led to a mini-slump (a stalemate against Southampton, a defeat at Newcastle), and it will be no surprise if something similar unfolds now. Just as Sevilla should have been the favourites last night, so Brighton should be the favourites for the FA Cup semi-final on Sunday. They find themselves in the unusual position of being both the underdog and, on form, the better side. United’s defence will still be in disarray: with Maguire suspended and Shaw apparently injured again, Ten Hag may even have to resort to Phil Jones. It won’t actually matter too much if the match is lost, as the winners get the dubious honour of being cannon fodder for City in the final. What United must avoid is losing vital players for the three league games that follow, which all involve their neighbours in the table – Spurs away, Villa home and Brighton away. They need a minimum of four points from those fixtures, with at least one coming at the Tottenham Stadium. Can they manage it? God only knows.
Tim de Lisle is the editor of United Writing and a sportswriter for The Guardian. If you’re on Twitter, do follow him and United Writing. If you received this piece by email, please feel free to forward it to any fellow sufferers.