Article 84 — United Qualify For The Champions League In 3rd Place
There was a familiar feeling that accompanied the lead up to the crunch match against Leicester City last night. I have experienced this a number of times before in my time as a United fan, going into the final day of the season needing a win or to pick up a point to secure an objective. The difference was that in those days, we were fighting to win the league title but last night we were fighting for a spot in the Champions League next season.
This is not a position United should be in. The objective for the season should always be to win major trophies not just qualifying for the Champions League. We are no longer the Manchester United team that we were so for this team, achieving this objective was paramount for its progress to be the Manchester United we are used to and demand for.
This is how the match went:
It was a tense and turgid affair from the start. You can feel the nervousness in our players. A number of the players have not played in a match of this magnitude before. Again I point out that the magnitude of this match should not be the highest level for these United players but it is where they are at now. That is a fact we got to accept for the moment. As a team, there was also the bad experience of losing two Cup semi-finals as well this season so there were extra caution and nerves on display so as not to get this game wrong too.
We took a calculated risk to play for a draw or at least not take any big risks to negatively affect the result. We kept the ball decently well without really penetrating Leicester’s defence who held firm with a low block and in numbers. Leicester needed the win but felt that their best way to victory was through the counter-attack. When they had the opportunity, they too were nervous in their finishing. The best they got was when Jamie Vardy’s instinctive header flicked off the angle between the bar and the post. Another was Youri Tielemans’ clever shot that was dragged just wide.
Defensively, we held firm and did really well. Statistically, we have a good defensive record, the third-best defensive record in the league. We have also kept 9 clean sheets in our last 14 league games. But the reality is that the defence doesn’t look steady and solid enough for me. The defence always looks like it is capable of making a mistake or allowing an opportunity or two to our opponents. Yesterday, for a change the defence looked resolute and fully focused from start to the end. Victor Lindelof, a player that is looked at as the weakest link in the defence had a brilliant game. His performance was reminisced of when he was part of Sweden’s defence in their surprise World Cup qualifier playoff win over Italy for the 2018 World Cup.
Having said that, there were still some scary moments. One, in particular, was Harry Maguire got the ball caught under his feet in the box. Luckily, Nemanja Matic was around to sweep up. Before that, Matic was guilty of giving the ball away in a dangerous position but luckily we were not punished.
Our attacks flickered into life in fits and starts. Fatigue and nerves meant we were not quite at our fluid best going forward. The best chances we fashioned out were Mason Greenwood’s header over the bar from Marcus Rashford’s cross ball and Rashford smashing a volley at goal after the ball fell loose from a corner kick. His shot was well-saved by Kasper Schmeichel.
We were clinical in taking our chances. Greenwood nicked the ball off Hamza Choudhury in Leicester’s half, played the ball to Bruno Fernandes who quickly slipped Anthony Martial through. Martial was sandwiched by Jonny Evans and Wes Morgan for our record-breaking 14th penalty of the season.
Fernandes scored in his trademark hop style to give us the lead. For the second goal, Schmeichel was robbed off the ball by Jesse Lingard who then had an empty goal to shoot into. Lingard scoring United’s last league goal of the season and his first for that league campaign.
A lot of anti-United fans and haters have been triggered and downplayed our record of achieving 14 penalties in a season. If one did watch the penalties we have got, you would notice that most of them were not fortunately awarded to us. We earned the penalties because we have players that took on defenders in the box with pace and trickery. Also for all the penalties we got, we have missed a bit too especially at the start of the season. Those misses had an effect on our result as if we had scored, we would have achieved a different result in those games and got more points. Scoring from a penalty cannot be taken for granted as well. It’s not a dead certainty that we will score from a penalty. As I have alluded to before, we have seen them missed not just this season but last season as well and before that. The credit goes to the kick-taker if he has a flawless record which in this case belongs to Bruno Fernandes.
Overall, it was a very professional performance. It wasn’t the best match to watch and it wasn’t our best performance but we did what we needed to do to get a result. Solksjaer took a risk that thankfully paid off. I was pleased that we achieved the objective of qualifying for the Champions League and the team showed mental strength and resilience in the last two-three games to achieve it. We got our results through grit, the ugly way which is very important for the team’s mentality if they are to return quickly to former glories.
We got here thanks to an unbeaten run of 14 league games and 22 games overall. For most parts, we achieved it in typical, traditional Manchester United style of attacking, swashbuckling football. The signing of Bruno Fernandes was a catalyst for United’s resurgence. Mason Greenwood’s emergence to play a key role is another contributing factor. The lockdown also gave us the time we needed to get Paul Pogba and Marcus Rashford properly fit for this run-in.
However, the end of the season came at the right time for us. Solksjaer was using his favoured starting eleven for almost every match without much rotation and the players are starting to look tired. I hope the week or so of rest the players get before the Europa League Round of 16, 2nd leg dead rubber against LASK would stand us in good stead in terms of performances in the Europa League. I hope to see more players pushing to get into the first team too and give Solksjaer the confidence and faith in calmly letting them playing without costing us the result.
Our points tally of 66 points is quite low. We finished our first post-Sir Alex Ferguson season in 7th place with 64 points completely out of Europe. To finish this season in 3rd place with 66 points, 33 points away from the league leaders, Liverpool shows the huge gap there is in the league. It also proves my point on why the Premier League is not the strongest league around as it is largely claimed to be. 66 points was the tally we got in 2015–16 under Louis Van Gaal but lost out on a place in the Champions League due to an inferior goal difference against 4th placed Manchester City. Jose Mourinho got 69 points in his first season, 2016–17 and missed out on Champions League qualification via league position while last season’s 66 points meant that we could only qualify for the Europa League in 6th place. I will provide my overview of the 2019–20 English Premier League season in another article. I will just say that we got a little fortunate that 66 points this season was enough for us to finish the season in third place and qualify for the Champions League.
For those that say United fans shouldn’t celebrate our qualification into the Champions League, I would say that it shouldn’t be celebrated excessively. Qualification to the Champions League should be seen as a minimum requirement for Manchester United, it should be a regular occurrence without any gap between seasons. Celebrating qualification into the Champions League would be celebrating mediocrity. However, we can afford a smile and take some pleasure at overcoming a deficit of 14 points and + 20 goal difference on Leicester City who were 3rd in January 2020, to end the season 4 points ahead of Leicester and with +4 goal difference. The way we achieved this should give us some comfort going into next season. I repeat for this United team, this is a step in the right direction and that is the progress we want to see.
