‘Improve quickly,’ United told
Zaha double ensures dreadful start for Ole
LONDON: Ole Gunnar Solskjaer blamed a lack of preparation time for Manchester United’s dreadful start to the Premier League season as Wilfried Zaha scored twice against his former club to hand Crystal Palace a 3-1 win at Old Trafford on Saturday.
United ended the 2019/20 season little over a month ago due to their run to the Europa League semi-finals and had just two weeks pre-season training together.
“You can see we are short [of match fitness] and they deserved the points. They were sharper than us in the challenges,” said Solskjaer.
“You can’t be too surprised we are not at our best yet because this is the first game we’ve played since the middle of August. We have had a very short and strange pre-season. We need to improve and we need to improve quickly.”
United finished last season on a 14-match unbeaten run in the Premier League to secure a third-place finish and raise hopes of mounting a title challenge to rivals Liverpool and Manchester City this season.
But on this evidence they need far more than the solitary signing of Donny Van de Beek, who scored on his debut, to compete at the top of the table.
Palace have now won their first two games of a Premier League season for the first time and on their last two visits to United.
David De Gea was beaten after just seven minutes as the United defence was carved open by Jeffrey Schlupp’s run and cross from the left and Andros Townsend ghosted in ahead of Luke Shaw to convert at the far post.
Zaha’s first goal of the afternoon was ruled out by the offside flag early in the second half from another promising Palace counter-attack.
But from Palace’s next break they got their reward as Ayew’s shot struck Victor Lindelof on the arm and, after reviewing the pitchside monitor, referee Martin Atkinson pointed to the penalty spot.
De Gea saved Ayew’s first penalty, but after another interruption from
VAR, the spot-kick was retaken for De Gea being millimetres off his line when the ball was struck.
Zaha took over the responsibility and this time crashed the ball home for his second goal of the season.
Van de Beek came off the bench to replace the ineffective Paul Pogba and showed his goalscoring instinct from midfield by latching onto a loose ball inside the area to halve United’s arrears 10 minutes from time.
But just five minutes later the game was killed as a contest when Zaha shrugged off Lindelof with ease before blasting low and hard past De Gea.
At Goodison Park, Everton’s earlyseason optimism was not curbed despite falling behind to Grady Diangana’s early goal.
Calvert-Lewin bundled home an equaliser before James Rodriguez put Everton ahead with his first Premier League goal and Albion imploded before the break.
Kieran Gibbs was dismissed for pushing James in the face in first half stoppage-time and then Baggies boss Slaven Bilic was sent to the stands after storming onto the pitch for a furious rant at referee Mike Dean.
Matheus Pereira equalised for Albion after the interval, but Michael Keane restored Everton’s lead and Calvert-Lewin sealed the points with his second and third goals.
In other games, Arsenal struck late through substitute Eddie Nketiah to beat West Ham 2-1 while promoted Leeds edged Fulham 4-3 to earn their first top-flight victory since 2004.