FIVE ASIDES
Europa League final: Spurs 1, United 0
To lose twice to this Spurs team looks like carelessness. To lose three times to them – in three different competitions, in five months – looks like criminal negligence. Against other English clubs, it’s always bad news for United to dominate possession. Every time they’ve had more than 60 per cent in the Premier League in 2024-25, they have either lost or drawn. Tonight they had 73 per cent possession, their highest figure of the season. They also had 84 per cent of the shots. And they still didn’t score.
United’s weakest link was their manager. When Ange Postecoglou’s midfield three smothered United, Ruben Amorim was slow to react, making no substitutions at half-time. When the early minutes of the second half echoed the first, he was slow to react again: in a situation that was crying out for an early shake-up, he actually went the other way, leaving the plane on autopilot until the 71st minute. Every United fan on earth was screaming for Alejandro Garnacho, who, as soon as he finally appeared, supplied the spark that had been so obviously missing.
When Postecoglou parked the bus, Amorim was slow to react yet again. United’s back five were now redundant, but Amorim kept them in place even though Kobbie Mainoo, United’s best lock-picker, had been warming up for ages. By the time Mainoo finally replaced Patrick Dorgu, it was the 90th minute. United’s next-best lock-picker, Christian Eriksen, never got on the pitch. And so United lost to a team who took only three shots in the whole game – the same as Leny Yoro.
In the league, Postecoglou is often just as rigid and dogmatic and wrong-headed as Amorim. But in the Europa he has played a different game, making a solid defence his prioriry. It’s hard to watch but also hard to overcomet, and in Bilbao it did the trick. Amorim, more bothered about sticking with his ‘idea’ than about getting results, failed to change, which made Postecoglou’s job all the easier. Spurs were nothing like their league selves whereas United played as they so often do at the weekend, starting dozily, looking disjointed, conceding first, only showing urgency in the last 20 minutes. On the map of average positions at Sofascore (above), the problem wasn’t hatd to spot: seven of United’s starters were clustered around the half-way line. Mason Mount, picked as a No 10, was no further forward than Noussair Mazraoui. Dorgu and Luke Shaw were getting in each other’s way, as they did for Spurs’ goal. Casemiro was dancing cheek to cheek with Harry Maguire. Only Yoro, Bruno Fernandes, Rasmus Højlund and Amad were where they were meant to be. All of them did well for a bit, but never all at once – Fernandes’ most creative spell, the last 20 minutes, came when Amad flagged. Højlund blew hot and cold as usual, but he would have had the equaliser had it not been for a magnificent clearance off the line by Micky van de Ven.
A dismal season is now worse than that: it’s a full-blown disaster. Amorim has led United out of Europe. He has led them to their lowest ebb in the Premier League era. He has set them on a road to nowhere. He has taken a misfiring squad and made them worse. By ostracising Marcus Rashford, he has reduced United to three fit forwards. When Amorim took over, after 11 league games, they were four points off third place; now, 26 games later, that gap has become a gulf of 29 points. Never has a manager done so badly and been serenaded so fondly. It’s a heartache, nothing but a heartache.
Tim de Lisle is the editor of United Writing and a sportswriter for The Guardian. He’s been supporting United for long enough to have seen worse than this. Just.