Manchester United

Priest in the Tempest.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

It had everything, including the tempest. Apparently the seas – well, Humber – got so wild that codling were being hurled into the stadium. The roof of the ancient Main Stand almost collapsed, not just because of the massed excitement but because of the weight of the krill. The lad Mbeumo had to fiddle a flattie from under his shirt before taking *that pen*: hence the miss.

Ah yess, the Grimbo-jokes. The howling gale of back-handed compliments and faintly feeble headlines, from media owned by Southern Softies and/or far-flung moguls. ‘Town batter United!’ ‘Shoal of the Century! The analytical consensus that ‘Amorim is drowning not waving!’ Marvellous.

The truth is that Grimsby Town outplayed Manchester United, in the first half. They had a strong case for a third goal, before United gathered at all – ruled out: no VAR. Yes, absolutely true that in the monsoon, the Mariners did lose their composure. Have no doubt that the apparently unfeasibly calm David Artell would have been inwardly raging at the way in which possession was repeatedly thrown away, in the second period. But perhaps it’s forgivable that messrs Fernandes and Mbeumo – amongst other key introductions – *did* turn the thing around. They do, despite the awful mess United are in, have some quality.

Vernam’s outstanding team goal lit the proverbial fuse on a night when many of my favourite people were in the stands, belting out the home anthems. (Yess. Am Grimsby – despite now being not unfairly described by those in the borough as Plastic Taff. And yess, grandfather played for both teams. So this is all rather huge. I know those streets and those stands).

The ground is wonderfully (largely) from another age; as seen on TV. The staff *really are* all about embedding this club in the community, in a way that the majority of club-owning scheisters and stockbrokers simply don’t understand. They can ‘project their visions’ all they want. Blundell Park ain’t perfect (and neither are the Team Leaders) but something very real has always lurked there. Jason Stockwood does appear to know that corporatism is the death of sport and of truth itself. Grimsby are Grimsby: they do deserve this kind of night.

So forty-five minutes in dreamland, with McEachran – who has quality – strolling around, and Artell’s side looking shapely and intelligent. Control of the game. A goal that might have been disallowed for handball (possibly?) and then Gardner’s borderline effort ruled-out. United all over the place – not just being ‘out-battled,’ that wouldn’t do justice to Town.

Half-time comes and Amorim implements the necessary cull. Fredericson patently had to go but half the team must’ve been a-wondering. Including Onana. The rain turns biblical and we Town fans think this might be just what we need – an absolute lottery! But in truth, both because of the influx of talent and intent and Grimsby’s understandable wastefulness with the limited possession they have, Manchester get back in it. Maguire is always on that figure-of-fun/Major Leader interface but notably he brought it – commendable spirit, I mean – and the reds fans had something to shout about. Then those pens.

I generally turn penalties off; no matter what the occasion. I watched these. We could throw descriptors like biblical and epic and humbling and heart-warming in there. Even neutrals might be doing some of that. I’m not neutral. I, erm, kinda follow both teams.

My socials went mad. The coverage has gone mad; because it’s Town, because it’s United. If there’s a consensus it’s that despite being a man of intelligence, integrity and purpose, Amorim is closer to the brink than he was pre the Trial At Blundell Park. Even those with active brain cells are saying that despite the carnage the man inherited, he is unable to make anything work and has to be accountable for that. Plainly, he is. The rest just want rid, being unable to see any complexity in this.

I think there is complexity. Take the case of Artell. When he came in (and on multiple occasions since then) he has felt like fella who can talk a good game. But not necessarily one you would follow or utterly believe in. He’s currently turning that perception around – with the players and support. Town have a pattern of play and a level of confidence. United, despite the talk of tactical drive, have neither.

We might talk dangerously in the abstract about character. We might be critical of the Premier League side on that, both last night and in general: everyone from Mainoo to Diallo to Cunha, perhaps? Would you want them in the trenches; never mind on a wet Wednesday at Blundell Park? Town’s players, from the outstanding Pym to the hearty Green and Rodgers, knew they had to bring some grit and determination (as a certain Mr Hansen might have said) to the proceedings. Because MU have better footballers. Therefore (we) work like hell.

Coaching is surely blending? Finding deeply and fabulously different qualities in different individuals and blending them together, whilst (in the modern era) feeding in bucketloads of stats and tactical info and beliefs. Ideally you want players with inviolable spirit and confidence but life ain’t like that. So blend and build. Amorim has work to do. We can no longer be clear that he has the time or the oomph to do it.

But those pens. Ridiculous and also pret-ty maarvellous that a whole cluster of League Two players held their nerve and slotted… almost endlessly. When the universe was screaming for it to end. Their composure in that moment is not all down to Artell, of course. But let’s give the man some credit for patrolling it with such evenness. Like a priest in the tempest. Fish all around him.

Fernandes finds it.

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We expected a biblical thrashing and got a biblical lashing. Liverpool was drenched, and so were we, in the usual psychotic drama of the fixture. Exbloodyzausting.

Trent made all the arguments for his transfer to Real. Hojlund powerfully reasserted his cruel, honest capacity to be ordinary. Fernandes finally found almost everything he’s lost for what – two seasons? Zirkzee came on and right at The Death overhit a wee pass to Maguire that got clumped over the bar with the net not so much yawning as black-holing. It was all soaked in sleet and glory and misery and yes, exhaustion. The players looked knackered, too.

Generality and gravity and meaning itself get swallowed-up in this most bile-full of games but let’s have a thrash at some streaky factoids. United deserved at least a point, after a performance of real grit and some quality – or at least organisation and heart. Liverpool had only occasional lung-bursting thrusts: markedly less control and, astonishingly given *all the trends,* practically zilch in the way of dominance. MacAllister should have scored, and maybe Gravenberg, in the first twenty, but United played with commendable composure around the inevitable surges. When Martinez thumped the visitors ahead, it felt kinda logical, in this sopping madness.

Liverpool’s response was more scattergun than Slot would have wanted. Sure they found themselves ahead but for longish periods there were no meaningful or threatening phases of play and Alexander-Arnold’s flank was a disaster area. The Outrageously Gifted One had a mare, almost from start to finish, leaving most of us nodding sagely at the thought of his upcoming role as unmolested God-Quarterback at Real.

Dalot was skinning him at will, on one occasion delivering a fabulous teasing cross that Amad either simply misread or could not, in the downpour, adjust himself for. Either way it looked like the striker – who was almost entirely absent from the fixture, despite being United’s most dangerous outlet for weeks – falls into the Can’t Head it for the Life of Him category. Alongside most contemporary forwards, you might say.

Fernandes has been an infuriatingly infuriated individual most of his life. After starting like a world-beater at United he has been playing well below capacity for aeons. The poor love looks infuriated by that… and referees… and by the inadequacies of his team-mates. His discipline has been ragged, as has his ability to thread passes that he knows Bruno F should be making in his sleep. Today he found most of the stuff that’s been missing. He was almost towering.

Amorim will be genuinely disappointed his lads couldn’t quite engineer a startling win but he will be reassured, somewhat. This performance – for it was A Performance, finally – settles the doubts about a possible relegation battle. United are poor but not that poor. They can and will probably find the shape they need – Amorim’s shape – and scuff their way to about 12th, come the end of the campaign.

Talking of scuffs, Amad’s goal for two-all (before the truly excruciating extra-time) was no thing of beauty but sent the away fans into predictable, performative paroxysms of pent-up relief and medium-foul tribal delight. The lad had barely been involved but the same could have been said for Gakpo, who delivered a worldie-from-nowhere to send the home fans wild, after that uncharacteristically solid start, and opening goal, from United.

Salah’s penalty was yet another one of those where the defender – in this case De Ligt – has no intention of making contact with the ball with his instinctively (but yeh, ok, slightly weirdly) flailing hand. In Proper Football there is no way this is a pen. Here it always felt likely as soon as referred: (rule change, please).

So where does this leave us – apart from breathless? It’s a Big Point for Manchester United… but doesn’t mean progress will be swift or smooth. For Liverpool it points up the edginess of their thrilling urgency. Can they stay patient, as well as destroy people, with their post-Klopp rampage? MacAllister can.

Mega.

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So the Make M U Great Again campaign can finally re-boot. Ar Erik is down the road.

Be honest, he should have gone more than a year ago – yes, a year! – because despite our civilising instinct towards giving a Good Man time, he has looked weak and woeful for an age.

Not his fault, entirely, that half of his players have let this once-mighty club down, or that Old Trafford itself is a whole lot less appetising, as a prospect, than it was ten years ago, but Ten Hag is complicit in that. The team has been a million miles off being competitive for United-level competitions for several seasons. Great players – some known, some not – must surely have turned down the (ahem) opportunity to go red, throughout that sorry period. At no stage has Ten Hag made a sustained case for meaningful improvement.

I have had sympathy for the fella. Bright, decent individual, or so it would seem, with an appropriate level of knowledge. Would interview well in the corporate environment- like so many. (And of course this is The or A Problem).

Making the right noises before a panel of impressionable, largely non-football people accounts for many of the new breed of sophisticates and tactical wizards now ensconced in the Prem. (And no, this is not at all a xenophobic argument). Us Footie Peeps know (because we feel it in our guts) who has the wherewithal to *actually manage* the #legends at Top Club A or B – particularly where languor or confidence-deficiency has set in.

It was clear within about twelve milliseconds that a) United needed a strongman – because of the existential and historical/emotional drift – and b) Ten Hag was not that guy. He could not capture or successfully cull. He could not meaningfully inspire, because he is not a man to follow. He could not ‘get top side’. In another environment, it might work. At Utd, no.

Sancho. Antony, Garnacho, Amad. Zirkzee, Hojlund, Rashford. Every one of them a notch down; either too weak or too wasteful or too needy to contribute consistently to the required standard. All of them in their admittedly different ways crying out for good management. (Meaning they either need a relentless, life-changing bollocking or sustained, committed, authentic support). Ten Hag could execute neither. He chose badly, failed to lead and/or failed to find the blend. From early in his tenure all this was obvious (to Football People).

Sancho is A Talent- quite probably of the classically arrogant and delusional about his own importance sub-type. His habits may have been bad. It took a lifetime for his soap opera to be concluded. Ditto the intermittently fabulous Rashford. An uneasy non-peaceful fug settled over that relationship, too – it goes on, when it should have been managed: resolved. Ten Hag sorted virtually nothing, when United needed either a big-hearted (Klopp-like?) force of nature or a fekking dictator. In consequence there has been no spirit – let alone Spirit of United. There has been no team pattern. There has been no grit.

Players are significantly culpable. Too many look and play like seventeen year-olds. Some – like Bruno – bring the required effort but cannot find a pass. Others are one-paced or far too lazy to close down sharply or track back with commitment. United are a pale shadow; have been for years. In virtually every way you can name, in every area of the park, they have been embarrassingly short and shockingly easy to play against.

Players culpable yes, but it’s up to the gaffer to build a resilient squad and demand or drive for elite quality and performance. Ten Hag may have found it impossible to attract (or drag) the very best players to Old Trafford since his appointment in April 2022 but he’s had enough moolah and still I think enough clout to assemble a strongish posse. Instead he has a pretty sorry mix. Maguire and Evans *playing together* in key matches? Zirkzee or Hojlund as your Main Striker? Van Nistelrooy they ain’t.

Manchester United have looked and played like a mid-table team for far too long. Accepted, some of that precipitous decline pre-dates the Dutchman’s arrival but he has patently lacked the authority or heft as a human animal to even begin to turn things around. Most onlookers feel most United players are waaay down on the quality and intensity that even their rivals understand as authentically M U.

Whilst having a wee dollop of sympathy for a man who has been serially let down by his charges, it’s surely widely recognised that Ten Hag had to go? (My regular reader will know I’ve been saying that for aeons). There was some almost inevitable prevarication post the arrival of the New Upstairs Regime but now we’re done. Out. Van Nistelrooy may have a chance: rather him than Southgate, for me. Let’s see.

United – yes or no?

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United: plainly in trouble, or no?

Could it be that the fans leaving early and the first loss to Burnley for fifty years are meaningful signifiers *but not the same thing* as a full-on crisis? That the ‘worst start to the season’ stat is merely a factor to be considered – one of a zillion – not an indisputable shepherd’s crook of a thing, hoiking Solksjær summarily to pastures less public?

How we judge depends as much upon who we are, who we support, how philosophic we can be, as upon the stats. This is part of the appeal, yes? The phoney war around opinion.

The league table itself is arguably provocatively fickle, whilst being apparently factual. We extrapolate stuff in order to judge: thus club X sits wherever but has played ‘higher than that’, or has maybe endured a tough, unbalanced schedule, or has simply played more football than that table suggests. (In United’s case it could be that they have played less). Results are key but they neither tell the whole story nor project forward, to account for momentum, form, expectation. Fascinatingly, we might argue that they don’t – or tables don’t – even show what has happened.

But back to United. Yesterday’s home defeat to a willing but generally workmanlike Burnley side. Two goals conceded, the first a sharp finish, the second a thunderbolt. Possible that Maguire might have closed down better for both; certainly he failed to read the danger for the first early enough. And therefore he is culpable.

But if you search around that United side and look to a) pick a captain b) pick a player of real quality and c) mark out those who are good enough and strong enough to influence things, during highs and lows, would not Maguire be close to the top of your list? Forget the price tag thing. The England centre-back is a fine player: he was just a mili-second behind the action.

All of which means nothing… except to illustrate something of the tortuous nature of any argument. Who/what to blame, when there is human error in the moment, the mili-second? For all the coaching and all the talent/confidence/frailty/genius/planning in the world, what exactly do we know? What’s controllable?
With United in trouble or in glorious flow, Maguire plays, if fit. What about the rest?

This is the crux. The team-sheet looked thin again, last night. How many on it are Real Manchester United Players? And how many are RMUPs when things are a-stuttering? And how many are RMUPs under a different manager, d’ya reckon?

I’m the bloke who said fairly recently that he didn’t think McTominay was a RMUP: I stand by that in the sense that he may only be good enough if the blend around him is right enough. Fully accept that before his injury he may have been the club’s most consistent player. But this is not the same as being a Real Manchester United Player when United are riding high, as Champions League-winning candidates.

 

Clearly right now, a fit McTominay would stiffen the durability and improve the consistency of the current side: he can do that in a way that Pereira and Fred can’t. But because he is good but one-paced, good but limited, the young Scot needs to be part of a blend containing more pace, more art, more elite-level guile.

Let’s go back to the stuttering. Who, in last night’s line-up is going to do the roll-the-sleeves up thing? Fred tried, to be fair. I’m not (necessarily) being critical when I suggest that Martial, James, Mata strike me as fairly obvious examples of players who are a whole lot more likely to thrive, to be influential, in a side that is 2-0 up than in one that is struggling. (Martial may have been playing hurt last night but he rather epitomises the quietly sulky, detached striker who-ain’t-gonna-bust-a-gut to make something happen: that’s really not one of his qualities. United need some of that – or some sheer, undeniable genius).

Enter Rashford. The brilliant boy is of course the Great Local Hope… but sadly crocked. In any case there is a plausible case that because he typically plays high percentage football – that is, he races and flashes and risks and is therefore likely to be medium profligate with possession – Rashford, despite his visible, developing gifts, is hardly the model RMUP. It is even conceivable that he may not become one, due to the sporadic, if electrifying nature of his contribution. (Yes, it’s true, I am suggesting that Rashford has some work to do to flesh out into a genuine, consistent performer at the level to which Proper Man United teams compete).

We could go through the squad and have a lot of fun and a lot of arguments about who is good enough. Wan-Bissaka looks promising, does he not? Unfashionably, I rate Mata for his intelligence and game sense but accept that his role is particularly reliant on the blend around him: in short, too, time may be against him. Elsewhere…

We haven’t mentioned the manager. The manager who seemed out of his depth at Cardiff. The manager (and local hero) who seemingly transformed the club, early doors, simply by being him, Ole, a breath of fresh air after the poisonous Portuguese. For remember, he did start like a returning legend, dragging the club into what felt like a an intoxicating new era. Until it stopped.

Solksjær is up against it, now. The strong sense that United lack patterns of play contrasts embarrassingly with their near neighbours. The lack of pace through midfield and relative vacuum where their energy, commitment and belief should be contrasts horribly with their other bitter rivals at the seaward end of that Ship Canal. Where Klopp now seems an undeniable and inspirational genius, Ole seems to be shrinking, ageing.

But does the fact of Solkjær’s brilliant start mean that he might find or reclaim the club mojo? When Pogba and Rashford are fit? When he’s bought four, five, six players? Does the former super-sub have it in him, to mastermind and sustain this club at Champions League level?

Most would say ‘no’ – certainly not with this team. Most would say something, too, about how the club has been run, more generally, over the last several years. I’m guessing that even some neutrals – and I know there won’t be many on this – might accept that a goodish case scenario would be that Ole Supersub (see what I did there?) did, in time turn the club around, restoring some of the verve this club has traditionally offered to the game.

Solksjær is likeable, retaining just a touch of the spiky, boyish naïvety we saw when he wore the Manchester United shirt. He did, when he first came in, really get the club going again. Oddly, he may have steered them higher in the league than they belong or deserve to be, this side. Might the shady businessmen, shuffling conspiratorially behind yet decide to ‘stay local’ and back him?

My life’s the disease.

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Friday 14th December. From a caff in a retail park. Enough.

Mourinho moaning at a presser. God what a yawn! His joylessness, his deathly narcissism. That ever-present, insulting hostility.

He’s been magnificent, of course – back then. When his energy felt irresistible and young. When his players loved him. When he really was a coach and mentor supreme.

Now he just moans. At an ungrateful universe, at fans, at the media. His contempt for everyone, for their lack of appreciation, is extraordinary. It swirls around him – around those pressers – like a virus. More than anything else, these days, it defines him.

It’s a given that contemporary journo’s are pretty much unable to ask Proper Questions of our elite managers but Mourinho’s brutishness marks a depressing low, on this. He’s out to bully all of us – those who dissent, those who query, those who recognise his tapering, diminishing powers. It’s both fascinatingly pathological and appalling.

Once he had a real, positive presence. He could motivate, in those critical, private moments; pitchside at the training-ground; pre-match. He was coruscating and undeniable – the most proactive coach on the planet. Scorching and soaring; at half-time, re-invigorating, re-ordering if need be.

Now the sense is of something – someone – utterly uncoupled from the will and the heft of those days: a man cruelly, manifestly unable to shape outcomes. Yes, he’ll make those subs; yes he’ll mull darkly and tinker… but nobody’s listening. Or worse – nobody believes. United are drifting and flailing and falling in front of the world.

Distantly, some bathos.

It may be that Jose always secretly wanted to lead United; there may be a touch of melancholy around that? He knew, he felt the weight of all that history.

What if he got to them eight years or so, ago? When he was a great. When the club were ripe for another round of their trademark, lungbursting, emoting glory. When he could have shaped it.

Now, he just can’t. Look at Rashford. Look at Pogba. Look at Mata. Lost, in their different ways. Painfully short. Crying out for skilled, sensitive, inspirational man-management. Lost.

We’re drawn into something inescapably moral, here: riled, provoked. Because United-era Mourinho makes many of us strike out towards something freer, better, more generous. (He’s a symbol, after all). You don’t have to be old-school to want football to break out – philosophically and in practice.

Who cares if we sound like romantic old fools? Imagine Rashford under Redknapp, or Klopp, or anyone with the heart, the soul, the essence, the interests of football coursing through their veins. Imagine being unwilling or unable to unweight that fabulous bundle of talent!

Mourinho appears to be both – appears both reluctant and professionally incapable, now, of both. If things were different, we might be sorry for him. But no. His loss – that descent into irrelevance, impotence – feels directly related to his own, sullen withdrawal. In a cruel universe, Jose is suddenly deservedly feeble.

The coach can’t play but he – she – builds the environment,   makes the whole bigger and the individual better. Mourinho’s blunted bravado kids no more: he’s a coach who can’t or doesn’t want to coach, preferring instead to count down the days to salvation – to the next ‘window’.

Things are brutal. United are beyond flawed, beyond what is acceptable. It’s gone.

The manager may get yet another major job – who knows? But this club (and arguably football) don’t need him; not anymore. He should have gone some time ago.

Strange ghosts.

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Juventus United; as big as they get?

Yes and no. Yes Juve have a certain megastar and some authentic *players* but United, United are strange, or estranged, or something. There’s a consensus – remarkably, perhaps – that this team has some quality (of course) but few of the qualities we might associate with proper Red Devils.

Go through the side and see how many settle into the kind of glorious-amorphous, universal United of the Ages. Or even the Plainly Fit to Wear the Shirt Eleven.

De Gea, certainly, Pogba potentially. Otherwise, I like the case for Mata as the kind of player United should pick and – strangely? – Luke Shaw for his ambition, his vital surges.

Beyond that, who? Rashford and Lingard plainly not yet. Martial? Good currently but not for me. Young, almost, but like Valencia, more a committed Pro than a truly high-level player. Matic a tremendous foil to theoretically enable the full-on rampant unleashingment of a brilliant attacking midfielder – but merely  a goodish international water-carrier, in himself.

More than this lack of quality, United lack direction, sustained energy – lack soul.

This feels like a betrayal and is understood that way by many – inside and out of the club support. The manager’s Trumpian darknesses – utter self-obsession, cynicism – have robbed the Mighty Reds of their romance and, frankly, much of their enduring appeal.

That Mourinho doesn’t, when it comes to it, give a toss about energy and style, is self-evident. That he really is past his sell-by-date, as well as past the moment where he deserves our respect, may be more a matter of opinion – but one I am untroubled by sharing. His team have sunk generally into the muddle of dourness and bad faith – or faithlessness – characteristic, apparently of the man. They are not United.

So this enormous occasion is strangely haunted, before we start, rather than brimful of evocation and memory.

Bung on the telly, half seven. Maybe half-hoping to see Roy Keane or Giggs or something which might light up that hope, that symbol, that reflex. Something lungbursty or flying-forwardy.

Nope. It may come, I suppose but BT, ludicrously, have Rio, Scholesy and Hargreaves on the settee; i.e wall-to-wall Proper United Blokes talking *realistic* shop. United ‘aren’t seeing the pictures’. There’s ‘no pattern’. We’re counting down to Juve v MU and it’s sounding quite dispiriting. Understandably.

Then The Mourinho Tunnel Interview. He’s not actually hostile on this occasion – merely typically ungiving. Hey but things could happen. Let’s watch.

De Gea’s birthday. 28. Won’t be here for his 29th, you’d think. Mata and Fred dropped, Lingard back, Herrera starts.

Moral victory for United as Szczesny flares a shockingly nervy strike out, about ten yards up the park. Pogba may be playing an advanced, central midfield role.

Lingard breaks out but the counter fizzles out. Cuadrado – right up there, for me as an over-rated player – gifts the ball to United in midfield but again no joy. However, after ten minutes, the visitors are looking decent.

First whiff of a chance falls to Juve, as Betancur is allowed a yard or two in the box – the shot deflected wide. Juventus now have a period of possession and some thrust, high up the pitch. Notable that the arch-stopper Bonucci ventures deep into the United box in open play.

United have predictably gone with Matic and Herrera central and deepish; 18 minutes gone and it’s working. The team shape seems good: Pogba freer. Positive energy around the pitch.

Dybala creates some minor fluttering at the heart of the United defence, following a beautiful first touch. In the aftermath Chiellini clunks Sanchez to offer the respite of a free-kick, thirty yards in front of De Gea. It’s alarm-less, in a good way, for MU.

I’m just thinking United look like a stronger side than they have done for months – a quality side – but then Matic swings a shockingly lazy pass to nobody, whilst trying to be the Cool Maestro in midfield. Embarrassing and possibly revealing in the moment, but no damage done.

Mourinho (if he does thrilled) will be quietly thrilled, on the half-hour. 0-0.

Out of nothing, Cuadrado beats Shaw too easily and his shot – deflected across Matic – is pawed into the six yard box by De Gea. Cleared.

First really poor moment from United follows. Smalling and Lindelof go missing as Khedira has time to turn and manufacture something, twelve yards out. His shot is scuffed, weakish, against the outside of the right-hand post. An escape – the first.

38 minutes. United beat away a series of corners and medium-threatening attacks. Dybala a central influence for Juve; Ronaldo peripheral, as is Pogba. (In fact Ronaldo is positive but peripheral, whereas Pogba is poor and the same. A concern).

As is the ease with which a further cross comes in from Shaw’s left flank. The young defender a tad befuddled, this time by some typically extravagant trickery from Ronaldo. Must apply himself – will get an earful during the break, I suspect.

The half closes with a corner for Juve, who have latterly been on top, without really opening up the opposition. The ball curls in but two clearing headers bring relief and the whistle.

Still no score; a good but not sparkling performance from Mourinho’s side. He will want more of that effective defensive shape, plus more involvement and more effect from the attacking midfielders in particular, second half. Juve are clearly strong but have not looked yaknow, *immortal*.

Dybala (not Ronaldo) looks to be their star. Early after the break he finds space in the box before arcing, turning and  swirling a shot. De Gea has no chance. It doinks against the top of the bar. It’s both a) the night’s finest moment so far b) the harbinger of a barrage from the United bench, aimed (I think) at Lindelof. Criminal to be ‘on it’ all over the field then sloppy in your own box.

58 minutes. The first sequence of play (or ‘plays’) for United for some time. Lingard and Martial involved – after a period of drift. Matic again flips a weird, lazy pass wide to no-one. No chance is fashioned but good.

Juve respond, Ronaldo curling in a cross from the left which Shaws attacks courageously before Cuadrado can strike.

Wow. A stunner. Bonucci drives an innocous but decently-weighted ball beyond United’s defenders. Ronaldo reads the path of the ball as it drops from over his shoulder. He volleys it, majestically, past the keeper. It’s godlike.

Drawing breath (and watching the re-run) we can certainly criticise the United defence – it was too easy. But bollocks to that. It was magnificent, it was Roy-of-the-Rocers, it was Top, Top Level.

Within two minutes the score might be two, as United shake off the shock unconvincingly. Juve, you sense, might blow most teams away after that; why would United be any different?

Sure enough, Ronaldo puts one on a plate for Cuadrado… who hoiks over from ten yards, max. It’s opened up and there is real danger, here: Lindelof not alone now, looking lost in space.

Rashford is in for Lingard. There looks no way back, for Mourinho’s men, despite an improved performance. Mata and Fellaini on – somehow the reds need to get from likely losers to unlikely winners. A second for Juve seems more likely.

It really does… but United hang in there… and Mata curls in a beauty to make it 1-1!

Ridiculous, but resulting from some sharp, skilful play by Martial, who had played wall pass ping-pong to create the opportunity.

88 minutes and Young lifts and curls another free-kick from out wide on the left. The keeper flaps, Bonucci fumbles and the ball is in the home net again. Unreal.

Gets more so. Two minutes later and Rashford is absolutely in but blazes against the keeper. Poor miss, in truth.

Doesn’t matter. As the ‘surefire cruise’ to a Juventus victory from woah, fifteen minutes ago doesn’t matter. United have only gone and won it.

Almost hilariously (but not quite) Mourinho stokes the anger of the home crowd, provocatively posturing on the pitch. Predictable perhaps, that even this fabulous finale is not simply a moment for joy for him – that it needs to be about him.

He will and should take some credit, mind. Despite a ver-ry mixed performance from Pogba and lightweight or perhaps more exactly uninfluential contributions from the likes of Lingard and Sanchez, United scored a famous and important win, built on good team shape and application.

They were competitive, they defended well as a team and when United’s central defenders were exposed, they scurried around and recovered. Juve deserved to be 2-up after about 75 minutes but United pegged them back: then they nicked it.

As a purist and sucker for that romance we talked of earlier, I’m chuffed for Mata. His free-kick was a waving of the wand, a delight. He can do this *from nowhere* – he can twinkle. ‘Course he can; he’s United.

United.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Unscientific poll. How many of us wondered about watching United on telly but were then partly entrapped by Football Focus… and partly repelled by how poor and under-charged Mourinho’s Listless Posse were, in the first half hour, at Bournemouth?

In scooting past, let me say I really did enjoy FF: it felt engaging and bright and kinda warm; unlike United. Nice features and Alex Scott and Dion Dublin – okaaay, despite not being strikingly inventive or original, maybe – were again genuinely good company. Unlike, we may be tempted to add, United… or Mourinho.

Okay, as I write MU have replied to Bournemouth’s deserved but nonetheless shockingly poorly-defended strike, making it 1-1at half-time. So they’re ‘in it’. In fact they could be metaphorically buried, already, and possibly their manager too, had the entirely possible scoreline of Bournemouth 3 Manchester United 0 been realised.

The fascinatingly authentic, raw and yet intuitively smack-on pairing of Redknapp Snr and Scholesy are currently unpicking United’s performance – presumably before an irate Gary Neville bursts into the studio, wielding a meat-cleaver.

Second Half. A whiff of urgency, following (surely?) another tirade from Jose the Furious. Luke Shaw bursts forward, collecting a decent return from Martial – should score but for a slightly heavy touch. But, as both Fred (who had pitifully thrown himself, earlier, feeling hands on his back) and Mata are unceremoniously hoiked around 55 minutes, the game has utterly changed.

Logic twists around this. It’s plainly true that United are suddenly a force – meaning Mourinho’s roasting has worked. Yet it’s also self-evident that there should have been no need. Young’s fabulous, bar-rattling free-kick and Herrera’s curler, plus the general, stirring re-boot, simply should not have been necessary. Not at Manchester United. Not at any team which manifestly needs to show some affirming, nay validating grit.

So why the bore and then the bollocking?

We find ourselves – inevitably(?) – with Mourinho. What’s the quality of his work, his influence, these days? Should he stay or go?

I think he should go. His influence, from Press Room to touchline, is somewhere between sour and outright malignant. His squad is certainly dispiritingly ordinary – go look, I just did – but the bloke has had years and extravagant funding towards improving it. The Coach sets the culture and mixes the chemicals: both are currently baleful.

88 minutes done. Might I be saying something else, had either Rashford or Lingard converted reasonably straight-forward chances? Absolutely not. Rashford’s disappearing presence speaks volumes around Mourinho’s exhausted capacity to inspire… but hang on.

As I write this the lanky, recently gawky-looking number 9 – previously a thrillingly energetic and directly protagonistic ‘handful’, remember – bundles a winner. Six yards out, having chested down rather unconvincingly, Rashford converts… and charges to the corner-flag to bury himself in the love (and relief) of the fans. There is the love of ‘one of our own’ in the air.

So extraordinary. United were useless then ‘in it’ then on top: somewhat crudely or gracelessly on top. Then they won.

That this wasn’t the kind of win that great teams manufacture through temporary blips goes without saying. Mourinho’s United are joy-sappingly ordinary. For me – he goes.

 

 

A loaded gun won’t set you free.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

There’s something about the moment that brings Joy Division to mind. It might be autumn; or the desperate cynicism around politics and society; the suspicion that something’s falling away – something profound, like goodness, maybe?

Lots of things feel hollowed-out or skein-like or like some web you want to wipe away… and the things that often mitigate against all that – arty stuff? Sporty stuff? – are kinda being psychologically outgunned, or disproportionately swallowed under by the Looming Dark.

Blimey. It’s come to something when a wee something on Utd City starts out like that. But, laughably or not, it does feel like legitimate context, because Mourinho, because Crass World Pressure, because Rooney, because there are stats all over indicting Guardiola(!), because The Death of Caring is upon us.

We don’t care about big things like human decency so why would we care about footie? Football doesn’t care about us, so why we would we bother back? What further proof could we need that the world is bollocksed when it *does appear credible* that Wayne from Toxteth, the last of the street footballers, might be off to China to rot in his armed apartment? How much  more can our idealism be snuffed out, when it’s so dead?

Something about Manchester United used to speak against this. Something in their redness, their pace, their invincible energy.

We all know half the world needs to hate them but even some of those guys felt the surge when a bloke name of Best ran with it. Then Bryan Robson and Cantona and Kanchelskis and Giggs. Charging. More out of instinct than instruction, more in joy than in calculation. This went right past tribalism: it was received as brilliance – something to be aspired to – okaay, maybe as well as hated.

Now, amongst other things, we have a manager who lives joylessly – ‘disastrously’ he calls it – in a posh hotel. And he daren’t go out. Throughout the Premier League we have poisonous rather than inspirational expectation and a kind of moronic appeasement to yet dumber, broadly ever more unaware players and agents. (Of course there are honourable exceptions but players generally must take a lump of blame for the utter separation between themselves and the fans).

Players seem greedy, lazy, arrogant and more-or-less dishonest. More interested in getting their opposite number red-carded than scoring. More interested in drawing a pen than scoring. Staggeringly unaware of how ordinary they actually are. Staggeringly not bothered.

This is somewhere between a cruel view and an average view of football’s things, I think. Maybe I should add that I grew up in a football family and that my grandfather was an MU player before injury cut short his career. So I’m not entirely an outsider, railing with neither authority nor understanding. I get football: I do not enjoy drifting from it.

On Mourinho I’m more dispassionate than most, being clear that he has been a great of the modern era but not hugely enamoured of his playing style. I think the possibility he may have wanted to be at United ‘all along’ is mildly fascinating and that *whatever happens* he must get three years, if he wishes it that way. However, whilst accepting that despite the obscene transfer spending before he arrived, there were faaar too many players at the club simply unworthy of the shirt, I am shall we say concerned(?) that he has not yet addressed that fundamental imbalance: more – that he may not have improved it.

The very crudest view would suggest that if you have a practically unlimited budget you should be able to straighten things out. Crude but trueish. And Mourinho may. He may, though, need more time than many of the proponents of that view might imagine, or allow.

It’s absolutely right that we plebs holler for some accountability or value – Pogba cost how much?!? – we’re entitled. We aren’t responsible for the monstrous salaries so we feel we have moral superiority over and above the usual shareholder/propper-upper stuff. This judgemental fervour is surely both contagious and dangerous – hiking up passions from the reasonable to the wild.

In this context it’s asking a bundle but us fans might still need to consider our contributions – vocal or otherwise. We need to think about how essential it is that players feel good, in a role, in an environment.

Bringing us back – in the United case – to Mourinho. The manager is the environment. His job is to select, after providing some tactical input and (mainly) creating an understanding; a zone of comfort in which players (sorry but this is still the best phrase) express themselves.

Mourinho has traditionally found a way – often magnificently, through sheer force of personality and brilliant proactivity – to win through, here. Sometimes via adversarial routes, sometimes by getting players (and fans) to love him. Intriguingly, right now, the universe is for the first time doubting his virility. It’s threatening to de-Specialise him. Tonight, against City, becomes a meaningful test.

Or it would if (sor-ree sponsors!) this cup meant anything. We saw from Liverpool Tottenham that it’s become a reserve team fixture. Plus, in this case, a bit of family malice. They’re’ll be a lot of hot air but this result does not matter: performances will.

Haven’t seen the line-ups yet (6.20pm) but hoping on the one hand for Mourinho to think more Fenerbache than Liverpool and unleash – or at least offer the possibility for – some Manchester United football. For me this means no Fellaini. (Fellaini goes, from Old Trafford, along with Memphis and Rojo and the others on your list, right?)

Longer term, there’s a slate to wipe clean. Ibra was always a short-term fix, the Rooney Question needs to be addressed and half the defence needs shipping out again. I think Shaw – if he can ever stay fit – is a player and Bailly was looking good but I am not convinced Smalling, however much this goes against the grain of contemporary thinking, is good enough for a proper, elite-level MU. Sorry but I’m just not.

Whilst we’re into the radical sweeps I’d like Mata and Herrera to get a generous run together. If this squeezes out Lingard for now, fair enough. Pogba stays in there. Rashford plays often – rotating with Martial and Ibrahimovic. Crucially, they are freed up, to dash, to charge, to play without fear – because they are Manchester United.

And now, as we fizz or freeze… kick-off.

One v One?

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

So this one is peculiar. In that, well, can anyone of us remember a time when teams quite like this – i.e. so-o close to being unworthy of the brand – competed for the Unofficial Championship of the Wooorrrrr-leda? Well – Lankishire. And okay I know prob’ly four-elevenths of Utd is nearly brilliant (guess which bits?) but such is the ragged nature of a) their defence and b) Liverpool that that provocative farker of an opening question stands. United are nearly shocking but third… and Liverpool are almost completely shocking and nowhere.

Fair enough?

Ok I did say provocative farker. Lately Manchester United have cartwheeled or blundered into a run of victories where that proper MU footie – the full-on whirligig carnival, the attack-attack hurricane – has held a giddy sway over woe, embarrassment and self-destruction. Flashing directness from Di Maria with Rooney and Mata popping passes from an almost convincing hub; Fellaini (remarkably) playing as though he intermittently remembers the gist of it all; De Gea pinning things together or, yaknow, doing that saving the day thing ‘keepers do. Liverpool meanwhile have been so shot that it’s bloody fascinating.

Rodger’s team are so far from the swelling and relentless brilliance of much of last season that even those of us who expected a drop-off have joined the flummoxed zillions. On the one hand we accept that losing Suarez and Sturridge would be massive for any side but how to explain the utter disappearance of the zest, the belief, the running, the teaminess? Extraordinary.

Given that the first imperative for any manager must be to sort the buzz – the environment – around the team, the dip in positive energy that’s occurred at Anfield is mind-boggling -and a serious black mark against the previously burgeoning Rodgers. As we speak, a whole host of spotty Sports Psychology students must surely be hypothesising rhythmically around the phenomenon.

OOOH- has he simply lost the dressing room? Aaah – is the almost casual decency and articulacy of the man longhand for ‘he’s just too soft?’ Do-oooo the players think him one-dimensional as a bloke and as a coach? Wordy and scrambled? I-i-i-i-sss the essence of this that Rodgers lacks physical presence in a scrap, or does his list of strategies read a) attack with pace, beeeeeeyah) poop yer panties if this doesn’t work? And OH SWEET JEE-SUS why the utter vacuum where Liverpool used to be, eight, ten months ago? Why?

Could be that Liverpool don’t have that many good players. And/or that when the squeeze came on at the death of last season things conspired to expose them; they were unlucky but they were (mentally) weak. Or could be Ar Brendan is simply failing to motivate the group – evidently failing?

From Gerrard’s freakish slip to the trauma-fest at Palace, the suspicion does burn that Liverpool bottled it. They nose-dived from the carefree to the lamentably vulnerable and if they haven’t stayed entirely in that same, hideous, crushingly calamitous groove, they have stayed crap .

You can blame individuals or individual moments for last season’s non-consummation but that collective truth – that Liverpool couldn’t quite hack it – persists.  Corrosively.

People laughed when I singled out Sturridge, Suarez and Sterling for failing to bury Palace midway into the second half of that tumultuous, decisive fixture. They said it was ‘obvious’ the defence blew it (as though I didn’t know that). We all knew the back four was Liverpool’s achilles throughout the season but in that key moment a tad more composure, a tad more ice in the veins from front players would’ve seen Liverpool beyond any sniff of a comeback. For me it was a critical sign that they lacked that essential, murderous edge; they were too close to the ordinary humans chasing after them.

This is history and I’m not (actually) arguing that it is central now. It is present but not central. It may have been causative but today/this season ain’t about scars, it’s about current lack of ease, pattern… and therefore form.

Rodgers has failed to bundle or bully or mould his much-changed group into anything close to a bona fide top four side. There is no comparison between what his attack might offer on Sunday with what Suarez and Sturridge and a flying Sterling offered last year.

Lambert, honest and competent as he is, serves more as a symbol than a striker. He can and will get goals, but he is one-paced and limited; he will rarely electrify the Kop or anyone else. His former club-mate Lallana is arguably theoretically closer to the required pedigree but has played poorly and looked like just another gifted but bland dilettante.

Liverpool have gone from being so tremendously free-flowing they didn’t need to think about nuts/bolts/assembly, to being a side with no engine and no personality. Even Gerrard has only occasionally or momentarily thrown off the slough through sheer force of will. Rodgers must take responsibility for this.

On the other side on Sunday is Van Gaal, a man who may be fluking or scrambling his way somewhere brilliant or precarious. He knows McNair and Rojo and Blackett and Evans and Shaw and Rafael and Jones and Smalling may all fall short of the mark. Against Liverpool he may well pick three of them plus Carrick and genuflect his way ostentatiously through the contest knowing god may not help him.

For United, everything is a gamble. They have quality going forward but they have no consistency – and they still have no defence. Whether they will attackattackattack against their despised rivals will be one of many questions pondered between now and the outbreak of hostilities. The Dutch bruiser-sophisticate could claim a maniacal but spirited offensive is the only way to go given his options and the relative distraction of his opponents. This could mean a fabulous goal-fest or a simple, deflating loss, as United get undone on the break – six times.

Or, we could get a proper North-West derby game. Loaded with bile, low on quality (this one could get very low?), notably unattractive.

Van Gaal is trying to get his side to zip the ball about; he wants great movement as well as instinctive early passing but this demands confidence. As we have seen with Liverpool there’s nothing as infectious as doubt, so United must hope that touches are sure and folks don’t go missing – both may be at issue Sunday afternoon. I can already hear LVG eyeballing his tetchy superstars and setting out the mantra – you supply the dodgy Dutch accent.

We have to believe. When we pass – yes! Believe. When we press – yes! Believe. When we accept the ball under pressure – believe. We can win the game. We are positive. This is what we do.

Van Gaal will find more quality – almost certainly from outside the club – and then he will build.  Even in the chaos of now there is undeniable momentum.

Sunday could be a day where all things may be so subsumed in the vortex that the personnel barely matter. Liverpool will naturally want to still the storm and United surf it. Rodgers nor Van Gaal should have to stir the blood of their players but the two gaffers will still need to perform. Wonderfully, the challenge may revolve around the degree to which one bloke can influence and inspire eleven others. Meaning a very real, very feisty one v one.

Currently, this would favour Van Gaal and United.

Eight changes…

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

“Eight changes” – of what, kit?  Once every 12 minutes or so, to maximise bird-pulling possibilities/employment of backroom staff? Of formation? Of tack, or strategy, or manager? (Now we know it can’t be that). No, this phrase that seemed to resonate so, from the Five Live commentary from Lisbon was merely a matter of numbers – superficially. Playing numbers; meaning players who are good enough to wear the red of United, away, in the Champions League, in what is likely to be the most challenging fixture of their group stage.

But I’m even more than usual an unreliable witness. In fact no kind of witness, other than the aural kind, following the infuriating refusal of our antiquated telly to trap ITV. (For some reason the channels are slipping away like a soapy ball circa 1968 from under Bill Foulkes’s boot.) And rather than sling the thing out into the street, after having the kids take turns to hold down the 1 on the remote – which worked for about 30 seconds – I spoke gently to the telly and doinked it,  reaching for the laptop… and Five Live.

Which is rarely a disappointment.

And so, whilst other senses were engaged with the business of wolfing down pasta/tuna/pesto – or P and T as it is affectionately known in our house – my ears tell me that a proper European night was unfolding in balmy Lisbon. Atmosphere; chances; flashes of brilliance or that diaphragm-gurning fear of such brilliance from their number 8/9/delete where appropriate. A stunning home goal, with Johnny Evans critically drifting when an admittedly special pass unzipped him. A rare but welcome sharp finish from everybody’s favourite shagger, Ryan Giggs. (Blimey girls, imagine how sexy the boy Ryan would be if only he could have… finished?)

United are ludicrously tooled up in the penetration department. Though I didn’t actually see them I believe Berbatov and Owen were amongst the predators left unspent on the bench – this in addition to the part-used Nani and Hernandez. A small digression here, before I go onto further labour this point about United’s absurd luxury of gifts…

I was on the Llyn Peninsula only the other week when who should almost bump into me – presumably in some crass attempt to get my autograph – but M Owen esquire. He looked small, young and very fit; end of. He will clearly have few opportunities but the otherwise supra-dull Mr Owen will, in his boringly defiant way, surprise no-one with a couple of significant, well-taken goals (Carling Cup/late on in Champions League matches?) and I for one, will be pleased for him.

But how far will the fizz and the flash and the alround foxy-in-the-boxiness of United take them this campaign? Evans’s blunder will not be a solitary blip on the defensive charts – though he will feature less once a) senior players are fit, if ever and b) Fergie realises he has to pick Jones ahead of him… everytime. Over recent seasons United have been pretty close to outstanding but you would fancy top players to expose their defence. Vidic can be made to look poor by pacy strikers catching him flat-footed; Evra’s defending for the last year has been, in my view, consistently shocking; Ferdinand is often imperious but more often absent.

However, to Ferguson’s great credit, United have been about attacking for aeons. As soon as you give them the ball, they are a threat. Amongst his other undoubted gifts, Rooney’s pace is at times unplayable. A simple one-two may be executed, leaving a defender utterly out of the game as the formerly balding one bolts for the return – or the return of the return. Hernandez is that precious thing the natural snaffler of sharp chances. Nani can play, no question, but needs a kick up the arse and most of us would like to give it to him.

On the one hand the team is manifestly brimming with goals… but hilariously there are a few dunces in the corner in this regard – Carrick/Fletcher/Anderson certainly, and to a lesser extent, Giggs. But to answer my question… United are looking better than last year and I like the freshness (and the challenge) Jones and Smalling are putting out. If they remain impregnable or their relative inexperience is not significantly found out then the reds are serious candidates – as in truth are City – for the last four. Barcelona remain favourites.

Back to Lisbon and a draw probably acceptable to both sides. A match with momentum and colour and something of that special atmosphere. A proper European night then, honourably competitive; one to cap with a walk on the coast path and a humbling perusal of the stars. In reality it’s thirty yards up and down the road, with the dog snorting snail-traces; bats though.