Article 76 — United Stays 5th, Inter Bounce To 2nd
Another match week, another one where Manchester United and Inter played on the same day at roughly the same time and another one where United kicked off earlier than Inter.
I changed my watching plan for this match week as I felt the previous plan didn’t bring good luck to Inter. Anyone involved with football tends to have some form of superstition. I am no different. What I did would hold little significance to you the reader but I would still share in case it interests someone. I decided to watch the United match from start to finish and only switch to the Inter match at half-time and full-time of the United match.
The unfortunate thing for me would be that I would need to endure this arrangement for the next match week as well. FML!
These were how the matches went.
Analysis of the United match first. I remember in the previous match at St. Mary’s where we have found it difficult going all the way back to Sir Alex Ferguson’s last season, we drew 1–1. My takeaway from that match was Southampton was not an easy team to face. They had strong, physical players, they pressed hard and had players that could play and hurt us.
As you would be aware by now, United was going into this match in a rich vein of form, unbeaten in our last 17 matches across all competitions. Results elsewhere meant that a win against Southampton would see us leapfrog Leicester City and Chelsea into 3rd place. We didn’t win as you would have known by now.
We started the game sloppily. If you have been watching, you might have noticed from the last three games that we started the game slowly. Sometimes we get punished for that slow start like against Bournemouth and today against Southampton.
We were taking one touch too many on the ball, passing it out slowly and that allowed Southampton to successfully press us and force us into making mistakes. From one of those mistakes, Paul Pogba got his pocket picked as we have seen before in other matches in his time at United. Southampton pounced on that to take a deserving lead.
Our response to conceding was strong which is a good sign of confidence, maturity and resilience in the team. Two pieces of good play and two goals. Anthony Martial set up the first for Marcus Rashford after receiving a pass from Paul Pogba. The second goal was mostly Martial’s individual brilliance.
We had chances to add a third goal but Martial blazed over twice, once when he was in a good position outside the box and another after going on a mazy, solo run. Rashford was denied from point-blank range after a heroic block by a Southampton defender. Despite all these chances created to put the game to bed, we didn’t play particularly well. Our final pass was lacking and the team looked tired in the second half. We didn’t play with the energy and verve we had shown in previous games.
It’s impossible to play at the same high level every match so, in games such as this, it is a matter of keeping focus and seeing it out with a strong, winning mentality. We have already shown character to overcome a deficit to win games in this run. Now, this was a different test I wanted to see this United team face. It is all well and good, playing well, scoring goals and winning games. Do we have what it takes to see out a result or to eke out a win when we are not playing well?
Pogba was the first to leave the pitch to be replaced by Fred as he looked to be tiring and not quite at full flow. Mason Greenwood was ineffective. He was on the receiving end of a robust but dangerous challenge from Oriol Romeu. Alarmingly, the VAR didn’t pick it up for punishment. A lot has been made of the penalties we have received and supposed favourable awards through VAR. But this is the second match I have seen a United player be on the receiving end of a dangerous challenge and the infringing player not as much as receive a yellow card for it.
Greenwood would need to ride the rough house tackles like his predecessors Ryan Giggs and Cristiano Ronaldo and to some extent, David Beckham did. I remember reading about how Bryan Robson would protect Giggs from such tackles. The game has changed since the 90s but in this day and age with technological support, I expect greater protection from the referees.
Ole Gunnar Solksjaer was frustrating me same the way Antonio Conte did for Inter. He was taking too long to introduce substitutes to try and score a third goal and bring on some fresh legs. Dan James might not be in good form but his fresh legs and ever ready endeavour could have helped us in both phases of the play. Bruno Fernandes was also not at his best logically, Juan Mata could have been brought on as the vice-Bruno.
The quiet performances of Pogba and Fernandes illustrate the need to find a suitable deputy for both players for next season because neither player can be expected to play every single match in a long season. Again logically, I feel Mata could be used in rotation with Fernandes but he has to be given a chance to prove that and when given a chance, I hope he takes it.
With a slender one-goal lead, Southampton started believing their chances. The closest they got was when Nathan Redmond’s shot was well saved by David De Gea. To be fair, it looked like we had done enough to hang on until an unfortunate clash of heads left Brandon Williams the worse for it and unable to continue. With United already using their quota of three substitution cycles, we had to see out the game with ten men.
The saying in football is that all it takes is a second to score and that is what happened on a corner kick. A sickening soft goal to concede deep into injury time past the stipulated five minute injury time allotted due to Williams’ injury. From being in 3rd position, we dropped back to 5th but level on points with Leicester City.
Leicester faces two tough matches against Sheffield United and Tottenham Hotspur before a head-to-head clash against us on the last day of the season. Chelsea is playing against already relegated Norwich City, newly crowned champions Liverpool and a tough one on the final day against Wolverhampton Wanderers. Champions League qualification through league position is still in United’s hands but we must win our remaining matches. There is every chance we might drop points as would Chelsea and Leicester such is the inconsistency of all three teams.
In the past, we would be looking at who our challengers for the league title, Aston Villa, Blackburn Rovers, Newcastle United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City had to play. Now we are doing the same but for a place in the Champions League. How we have fallen but it is critical we get back into the Champions League and win a trophy. If all fails through our league position, we can still get into the Champions League through winning the Europa League. Now the test will be on how the team will bounce back from this disappointing result and below-par performance.
Over at Inter, I didn’t see much of the game to be able to comment much on how we played. From the highlights, I saw Inter concede through an unusual error by captain Samir Handanovic. It was a goal typical of what we are going through now, conceding soft goals through our own mistakes reflective of our vulnerable and weak mentality.
We responded very well in the second half to overturn the result with two goals within three second-half minutes. The crucial goal was to arrive in the 61st minute when Lautaro Martinez’s shot took a fortunate deflection to beat Salvatore Sirigu to finally break his goalscoring drought. I am pleased for him that he finally scored and I hope that would see him return to goalscoring ways. We have missed his goals in recent games. That third goal was to be the difference. That was was what was missing in the draws against Sassuolo and Hellas Verona and the defeat to Bologna. A goal to kill off the tie.
I am also pleased that Diego Godin broke his duck to score our second goal. He became our 18th goalscorer this season in Serie A equalling the club’s record in 2007–08. Across all competitions, he became our 19th goalscorer. Defensively, there were still some hairy moments. Andrea Belotti’s header crashed off the bar to nearly cut the deficit to one goal.
Inter had chances to score their fourth and more but couldn’t. Torino is not going great guns at the moment and had we not beaten them, we would have slipped deeper into crisis mode. It was a very important win for morale and confidence and I hope we can build on it for the next match against relegation battlers, SPAL. Just like that, we have bounced from 4th to 2nd, level on points with Lazio.
Despite not keeping a clean sheet since December 2019, it is interesting to note that we have conceded the second least number of goals. We are also joint second top scorers in the league with Lazio. In the aftermath of the game, Antonio Conte spoke positively about commitment to the cause. No more talk of probably leaving at the end of the season.
It just seems to me that Conte is like a kid. He hates losing so much that he throws out the dummies in his crib the moment he loses a game or reaches a point of poor form. When things get better, he speaks about a commitment to the cause and all is good again. I hope we go on a run of wins now and we will have our injured players back.
