United lacking spirit and trophies after Consolation Cup final
Chelsea 1 Manchester Utd 0
In a painting of hell by Manchester United’s fans, Manchester City would win the English Premier League by 19 points and Liverpool would be in a Champions League final.
In this perdition, United would be left needing to win the FA Cup to stave off an inferiority complex and stop people dozing off in their games.
The Consolation Cup final, as many called yesterday’s FA Cup final won 1-0 by Chelsea against United, posed much sharper questions for United than Chelsea, where managers come and go like London buses.
Chelsea are at a junction, where their power in the transfer market will be tested this off-season. But United’s record-equalling 20th FA Cup final was a much bigger deal for the team in red. Jose Mourinho’s mistrust of entertainment, which sits uneasily with City’s artistry in the same metropolis, asks an awful lot of modern audiences.
In the instant gratification age, it places United on the stylistic margins, pretty much on their own, where trophies are the only riposte to those who think the club have lost their way — become a deal-making factory.
That mission turned even tougher when Eden Hazard burst through the centre and was brought down by Phil Jones in United’s penalty area after 20 minutes. This portent of what England can expect when they meet Belgium in Kaliningrad on June 28 was also a reminder that United need more bold, direct running in a team not short of players capable of it.
Alexis Sanchez, Marcus Rashford and Jesse Lingard are all equipped to rip into teams, but Sanchez has been innocuous in a United shirt and Rashford was a shadow of his youngest, carefree self. Rashford seemed weighed down and unable to organise his feet. England have work to do to restore his zest in Russia.
How much Mourinho is to blame for United’s joylessness is a rolling debate. In mitigation, their response to being 1-0 down at the break was industry and spirit. Yet the spark and accuracy you associate with Man Utd teams appear seldom there.
Against the backdrop of emergency surgery for the club’s greatest manager, United’s fans unfurled a giant banner that said: ‘Every single one of us loves Alex Ferguson.’
At stake for Ferguson’s old team was how their fans regard the whole experience of watching them, the whole feel of the club, the eagerness (or lack of it) to renew season tickets. Some have run out of patience with unadventurous football that looks like a denial of United’s raison d’etre.
On this faultline, many of United’s followers are caught between age-old loyalty and the kind of disengagement seen at Arsenal in Arsene Wenger’s final year. On trophies and finishing positions, this sounds absurd. Under Mourinho, United won the Europa League and League Cup last season, his first, and finished second in the league this season.
The way Mourinho tells it, he inherited from Louis van Gaal and David Moyes before him a mess that required structural correction.
Mourinho expects fans and the media to accept his messages about this or that player not applying himself correctly, or not carrying out tactical instructions. The suspicion is that United have become a ferocious deal-making operation that sucks in revenue as the older, more spiritual side of the club has been cast aside.
For all United’s spending — a net outlay of £417 million since 2014 — there was nobody in their ranks to match Hazard, who again grabbed the role of totem and tormentor. Plainly Hazard is secure in the job of matchwinner and house superstar. His relationship with Conte has not been friction-free but Hazard would never have to ask his manager for permission to play with freedom.
With many of United’s players, you sense inhibition. Whatever Mourinho sensed, in Rashford but also Lingard, he acted on it, sending on Romelu Lukaku and Martial in their place,
after 72 minutes. An apparent handball in his own box by Ashley Young was not deemed a penalty. So the pattern resumed of United pouring forward in that unstructured way of theirs and Chelsea surviving off counter-attacks.
And survive, Chelsea did. At the end, Mourinho found himself being slapped on the backside by Conte, after a long embrace. No hard feelings there, then, but at the red end of the ground, United fans shuffled out to assess their feelings about a season high on mechanics and low on thrills.
The numbers will say United are where they need to be financially but something is missing. Second place in the league will not assuage the feeling this is an uptight United side, unsure what their manager will say or do next. Their spirit is locked in and needs freeing.