They lost it
It was Brentford all over again as United went back to square nil. (We'll spare you the highlights)
FIVE ASIDES Premier League: Liverpool 7, United 0
This was Brentford all over again: concede a goal, concede another, go to pieces. United’s back four, who had shown plenty of mental strength between these two fiascos, lost their heads. They allowed Liverpool to do to them what Real Madrid had done to Liverpool the other day – scoring five times in no time, after being the lesser team early on. United were the first side to get the ball in the net, through Casemiro’s offside header, and they should have scored before that. On expected goals this game was 3-1. Liverpool had eight shots on target, and all but one of them went in. That was a freak, but United enabled it to happen by being sloppy in the first half, with their passes and their chances.
It wasn’t just the defence that had a shocker: Erik ten Hag got it wrong too. He picked a player who is just too wasteful to take his place in a team set up to play on the break. Antony is where United’s counter-attacks go to die. His crossing, never adequate, went from bad to worse here. His shooting, his one redeeming feature, wasn’t good enough either. Ten Hag just had to take him off at half-time, to put Bruno Fernandes on the right to provide proper crosses, and move Marcus Rashford to the left to exploit the space behind Trent Alexander-Arnold, with Wout Weghorst (or Jadon Sancho, who is quicker and more deft) as the false nine between them. As it was, Antony stayed on for the whole game. He is in danger of becoming United’s answer to Nicolas Pepe of Arsenal, a top-dollar signing who supplies the occasional screamer and nothing else.
Ten Hag, whose moral compass is normally so reliable, even got that side of the game wrong. He had United wasting time early on, after complaining the other day about Newcastle’s habit of doing the very same thing. That little rant may have been tactical, designed to put some pressure on the ref at Wembley (David Coote). But it’s sheer hypocrisy to go and do the same thing yourself a week later. And it’s too defensive anyway. At Anfield, as Carlo Ancelotti had just shown, the best form of defence is attack.
There were two mitigating factors. This was Anfield, where visiting teams usually lose the game and sometimes lose the plot. And one end of the pitch did seem to have been watered over-zealously at half-time, causing several players to slip in the vicinity of United’s box. First it was Cody Gakpo, trying to press Lisandro Martinez; nothing came of that. Next it was Casemiro, whose slip played a small part in the slapstick build-up to the second goal. Then it was Martinez, and that one led to the third goal. Three slips in five minutes, two of them fatal – but you have to say that, with Raphael Varane and Luke Shaw suddenly unrecognisable, United might have leaked goals anyway.
This battering could be a blessing in disguise – albeit quite a heavy disguise. It puts a stop to any talk of the quadruple, which was fanciful anyway. It means Ten Hag can concentrate on staying third and adding another trophy to the League Cup. In terms of the tussle for the Champions League, it’s a game United could afford to lose. They’re still seven points clear of the club in fifth place, which happens to be Liverpool (though they’ve just blown their advantage in goal difference). They only have one more of the type of fixture Ten Hag finds most difficult – away to the other five members of the big six – and that’s at Spurs, their happiest hunting ground of the five. But United will have to find the cool that they lost today. They may need a calmer captain than Fernandes, a wonderful player who can’t seem to rise above the fray as captains must (though he did well to front up for an interview afterwards). And they will have to win their next two games, against Real Betis and Southampton, both of which, happily, are at home. Only then will they persuade us that this was just a very bad day at the office.
Tim de Lisle writes about sport for The Guardian and music for The Mail on Sunday. If you’re on Twitter, do follow him and United Writing.