United pick up pace as Ten Hag avoids difficult questions
MANCHESTER United brought so many supporters to the DW Stadium that they occupied the whole of one side of it. As bad as United get, and as low as they fall, they keep on coming to watch.
Here, on a freezing cold Lancashire night, United’s support at least got a little of what their patience and their loyalty deserved. Erik ten Hag’s team were professional, diligent and occasionally expansive.
After their goalkeeper Andre Onana bailed them out in the third minute, they dominated their opponents from League One to the extent that they mustered more than 30 shots on goal. More importantly, two of them went in and Ten Hag was able to head home down the M61 in the knowledge that another week of difficult questions had been averted.
Once again members of Jim Ratcliffe’s INEOS team were here to watch United’s season roll on. It was United’s support that had made the greater investment on this occasion, though, and it was of an emotional kind. This game was on terrestrial television and took place at the start of a January week that will end with a home game with Tottenham in the Premier League. There was, in short, plenty reason enough not to be here.
The hordes that came, though, saw their team take a stranglehold on the match after a tricky opening 10 minutes. Once full back Diogo Dalot scored midway through the opening period, the pattern of the game was largely set. And though it took a Bruno Fernandes penalty to secure passage to round four in the 74th minute, Wigan had long since disappeared from the game as an attacking presence.
Shaun Maloney’s team — 18th in the third tier and on a run of one win in six games — played some admirably neat football, building play from the back whenever possible. But at times it seemed as though Wigan may benefit from a little directness. Quite simply, they didn’t spend enough time in the United half.
Onana is now considered so important to United that he has been persuaded to delay his departure for the Africa Cup of Nations into next week. Here he saved his team from the worst possible start.
The Premier League team once clinched a title on this ground but that was in 2008 and this is now. Things have changed. With that in mind, it was not a surprise they started slowly. After Wigan broke down the right and Martial Godo crossed low to the far post, Thelo Aasgaard would have scored had it not been for Onana’s sharp low block with his legs.
With less than three minutes gone, that felt like a bad omen for United and indeed for the next 10 minutes the team from League One played some neat and ambitious football.
Godo, on loan from Fulham, was a particular menace with some flicks and sharp runs. But Wigan’s early impetus was not to last and once United found a way into the game, their first-half dominance was such that it was something of a peculiarity that they only scored one goal before the break.
It was United’s pace that Maloney’s team could not deal with. The midfield pair of Scott McTominay and young Kobbie Mainoo laid a platform of possession on which United could build and as Ten Hag’s forward players began to come at them from all angles, Wigan couldn’t really cope.
United should have scored before Dalot eventually did in the 22nd minute. Marcus Rashford had started the game hesitatingly but he wasn’t alone there. Soon he found a little of his real self and Wigan goalkeeper Sam Tickle had to react sharply to save a snapshot low by his right-hand post just before the quarter-hour. Six minutes later, McTominay somehow placed a shot wide after a Fernandes exchange of passes with Dalot had opened Wigan up like a can of beans. And then, almost inevitably, the goal arrived.
Alejandro Garnacho has been one of United’s better attacking players during these recent troubled times and when he crossed from the right side, Wigan could not fully clear the ball. Dalot, a full back, would not have been everybody’s choice to collect possession but when he curled a shot towards the far corner from 18 yards, Tickle was never likely to stop it and he didn’t.
It was a body blow to Wigan and for a while they didn’t recover. Tickle fumbled a low Rashford shot on to his post, Rasmus Hojlund was denied by the goalkeeper’s leg from an angle and then headed another Garnacho cross on to the top of the bar when he really should have scored.
With 15 minutes of the opening period still to play, Wigan had been rendered desperately vulnerable by some sharp United play. Rashford was denied again by Tickle before Garnacho struck the bar from distance. At the other end, in a rare foray, Wigan’s Stephen Humphrys drove low across goal and Godo was close to flicking the ball in as it sped by him.
United were less convincing in the second half. Still, though, they could have extended their lead with better finishing.
Rashford was off target before Mainoo, impressive on the whole, drove low from 18 yards and was
denied on the stretch by Tickle. The Wigan goalkeeper has an England Under 21s call-up to his name and was resolute here. Still, he was relieved to see McTominay’s volley from 12 yards deflect up and over the bar with 25 minutes to go.
Wigan had hardly threatened since that early save from Onana but, crucially, were still in the game. As the match reached its final third, Maloney’s team did manage one or two breaks that caused United some alarm.
The best of them saw Godo race down the left into space and an early cross to the far post would have found Liam Shaw waiting. But on this occasion Godo tried to beat one man too many and the chance was gone almost as quickly as it arrived.
And soon all hope was gone, too. With just over a quarter of an hour to go, Fernandes cut back on Shaw and the challenge brought him to ground. Referee Anthony Taylor gave the penalty and Fernandes rolled it to Tickle’s right after persuading the goalkeeper to go the other way.