The post-Sir Alex Ferguson years of Manchester United have often proven downbeat and underwhelming, but few iterations of the Red Devils have been as confounding and confusing as this one.
Erik ten Hag’s 2023/24 outfit have flattered to deceive for the most part. If you were being generous, you can offset a lot of their dismal performances and results down to their varying injury crises, but things shouldn’t be this bad.
United showed their very best qualities to come from behind and beat third-placed Aston Villa 3-2 at Old Trafford on Boxing Day. Here are 90min’s key takeaways from that victory.
Marcus Rashford‘s best football has always come when coming inside from the left.
Alejandro Garnacho is one of the Premier League’s quickest players and is capable of going both ways at full tilt.
It shouldn’t have taken Ten Hag this long to realise how to get his star wide-men reading from the same hymn sheet.
Though sometimes his body language was at times…let’s say ‘suboptimal’…Rashford’s quality really raced to the surface up against Villa’s naive high line. Likewise, Garnacho was able to twist and turn his way infield as well as around the outside. A defiant second half display should have served both well moving forward.
Rasmus Hojlund claimed he was the ‘happiest man alive’ in the aftermath of his winning goal – the Dane’s first in the Premier League.
But it shouldn’t have taken 15 sodding games for him to score a league goal. That’s ridiculous. Some of the blame is in part down to him for not even fashioning some luck to find the net, but United generally have done an awful chance of feeding their centre forward. Even this goal required a bit of fortune and quick-thinking to react quickest from a corner.
Hojlund’s impressive Champions League performances proved he has the tools needed to dominate centre-backs and harass defenders. Now he just needs a consistent stream of service.
Tuesday’s match was the first since the club announced a deal with INEOS to purchase a 25% stake in the club.
The chemicals company were represented at the game by Sir Dave Brailsford, who will become a United director once the transaction has been approved by the Premier League.
Fortunately or unfortunately, he was treated to a true Jekyll & Hyde performance from his new team. The glaring deficiencies were probably more obvious than the potential despite United’s resounding fightback to earn the three points.
This version of United remain a work in progress, and boy will INEOS know that.
There has understandably been quite a bit of speculation regarding the future of Ten Hag in recent weeks. New ownership groups – in this case, at least ones with power in the football department – sometimes want to mark their new reign with a fresh change of manager. United’s woeful results and performances would be enough of an excuse anyway to part ways with Ten Hag and start afresh.
But the club can’t keep chopping and changing like that. The 2023/24 season has raised questions over the destination of the Dutchman’s project, but he does deserve more time to find a solution. He should at least be granted the use of a fit squad with most of his star players healthy again.
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