IT’S A BREEZE FOR LOUIS
Smalling gets the ball rolling for United as tame Shrews slink out
Manchester United are as vulnerable now as they have been in close to 30 years, but the news obviously hasn’t reached shrewsbury. after stamford Bridge on sunday, this was another horrid anticlimax of an Fa cup tie, the underdogs playing as if they had everything to lose.
Micky Mellon’s team didn’t threaten, didn’t risk, didn’t even countenance the type of hightempo, harum-scarum game that can unnerve a Premier League team in this competition. Instead, shrewsbury sat back and invited United to do their worst.
the consequences of that are hardly as terrifying as they used to be, but the outcome was predictable enough. United breezed through, two goals to the good before half-time, three up on the hour, playing the last 15 minutes out with 10 men, due to injury. If shrewsbury’s plan was to sneak the draw and head to Old trafford for the pot of gold, it was poorly conceived and inadequately executed.
United could front-load without risk and needed no second invitation. at 30 minutes, 18 of the 22 players had spent the majority of the match in the shrewsbury half, and on 60 minutes only a single shrewsbury man had spent less time in his own.
It was as a direct result of this absence of pressure that United took the lead. With the home team showing so little inclination to attack, even on the counter, United could afford to leave numbers up. the scorer, chris smalling, felt no pressing need to return to his defensive duty.
Given all that had gone before, what happened after 37 minutes can hardly have come as a surprise, even to the locals. shrewsbury cleared another raid from United but, without sufficient men in support, the ball came straight back as usual. Morgan schneiderlin won a header far too easily on the right and it fell to captain smalling, who had remained upfield. smalling smashed his shot into the turf, it sprung up and past Jayson Leutwiler in the shrewsbury goal and United had the advantage their first-half dominance deserved.
soon after, in first-half injury time, that lead had doubled and the contest was over. Zak Whitbread tripped anthony Martial to concede a booking and a free-kick on the edge of the area. Up stepped Juan Mata and curled it over the wall and into the corner. It was no more than a little dink really, but Leutwiler — his view obscured by three United players in an offside position — made no attempt at retrieval.
Finally, with more than an hour gone, shrewsbury plucked up the courage to go at United. What happened next perhaps explained their caution. Goalkeeper sergio romero gathered the cross from Jean-Louis akpa akpro and quickly recycled the ball. Within seconds it was up the other end, ander herrera crossed and Jesse Lingard scored United’s third. Maybe it wasn’t a conservative game plan after all. Maybe shrewsbury simply aren’t very good.
certainly, their league position suggests as much, fighting to remain in the third tier with no league win at home since October. It could be argued teams in inferior positions have put up more of a fight but shrewsbury’s confidence seems as low as United’s right now. When they finally got a good chance with five minutes remaining, abu Ogogo steered the simplest unmarked header wide. It is hard to believe Louis van Gaal has ever had a less stressful night.
his players were not wonderful, but they did not need to be. competent would d do and by the end, the veryry idea that this could have ave been Van Gaal’s Waterloo appeared laughable. shrewsbury were the lowestranked team in the last 16 and d played like it. . It was an n anti-climax for the neutrals at home but the best of all possible worlds for United, who have a far ar greater test against Midtjylland in the europa League on thursday.
Physical, hard-working, ard-working, ambitious, unpredictable, the Danes are everything shrewsbury might have been. It doesn’t have to be a mismatch when inferiors take on Manchester United these days, but this was most certainly one.
so it wasn’t much of a match, and certainly no spectacle. that was a pity, all things considered. United’s accuracy around goal early on suggested anxiety and a better team, or o one with more amb ambition, could have causedc them problem problems. the game was just 7 75 seconds old when smal smalling should have put United on their way. Jack Grimmer, shrewsbury’s hero in the previous round, clumsily conceded a corner which Daley Blind whipped in from the left. smalling rose the highest but, faced with the most straightforward header to score, sent it high over the bar. he was similarly wasteful in Denmark last week.
after four minutes, Memphis Depay cut inside on the right and hit a shot which he misdirected quite appallingly.
and so it continued, wave after wave, with absorption shrewsbury’s only ambition. Depay tried his luck again after six minutes, this one travelling halfway up the stand, followed by Mata and herrera. the shots were getting lower, but still failing to trouble Leutwiler. he was about to become a lot busier.
a foolish blind back- heel by shrewsbury’s Ian Black put his team-mates in trouble and the first accurate shot from Depay was tipped out to the left by Leutwiler. soon after a Martial shot struck Leutwiler’s foot and bounced up, backspinning dangerously towards goal until headed off the line by Ogogo.
Yet, despite the siege taking place, shrewsbury were still keeping United at bay. Desperate times call for desperate measures and when Jermaine Grandison fouled Depay in a dangerous area after 26 minutes, United tried a free-kick straight from the training ground.
three United players lined up behind the shrewsbury wall, obscuring the vision of Leutwiler. referee Bobby Madley warned them that they would be judged offside, but clearly there was going to be more to it. sure enough, as Depay ran in to take the kick, the dummy wall ran out — and Martial was smartly felled by a ball to the head, much to the merriment of the locals. Put that one in the file marked ‘too clever by half’.
Much like Van Gaal’s water drinking technique, as captured by the BBc cameras. If he can’t even find his mouth, it is hardly a surprise that his team can’t always find the goal. certainly Depay needs to work on his accuracy. If he had 12 shots at Osama bin Laden, the 9/11 mastermind would still be alive today.