LEGENDS TEAR INTO UNITED FLOPS
No chance of top four . . . and no easy fix for huge problems
GRAEME SOUNESS ripped into Manchester United after yesterday’s 2-0 defeat at West Ham, saying this is the worst team they have fielded for almost 30 years. After goals by Andriy Yarmolenko and Aaron
Cresswell sunk Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side, Liverpool legend Souness told Sky Sports: ‘I would say this is the worst group United have had since the Premier League started (in 1992). United find themselves in a very, very difficult place. I don’t see any quick fix.’ Former United captain Roy Keane and ex-manager Jose Mourinho also castigated the club.
ONE of these teams is finally moving slowly forwards, the other continues to regress.
So why would anybody be surprised that West Ham saw off Manchester United rather routinely?
for those who haven’t been watching properly, this is what United have become. They are a mid-table Premier League team in waiting.
The only real question is whether the rest of the teams supposedly challenging for the top- six positions have the wherewithal to put them there.
The occasional result can hide a few things.
Last season’s win at Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League saw ole Gunnar Solskjaer given the manager’s job, for example. on the opening day of this season, United beat Chelsea 4-0.
But any horse can win a race with only one other in it from time to time. The truth lies in patterns, in sequences, and United have won five of 19 games since that night in Paris and scored just 16 goals in that time at an average of less than one a game.
Want a true picture of where this team is at? There it is, right there.
It is also to be found in the fact that Ashley Young still gets a game, that the United bench is populated by players that could take a trip to Manchester’s Arndale Centre and not be recognised, and that United sold their main centre forward in the summer and did not replace him.
As one observer suggested last night, with Marcus Rashford now injured the only recognised goalscorer United have left is Solskjaer himself.
When Rashford, who was dreadful, went off in the second half, Jesse Lingard, a midfield player, replaced him.
So United are vulnerable and the rest of the Premier League knows it. It has taken some teams a while to cotton on but West Ham are not one of them.
Manuel Pellegrini’s team beat them at this ground almost exactly a year ago and have improved since then, so there was nothing for them to fear.
for a while it was a poor game. United were leaden and one-paced and West Ham were equally slow to find a rhythm.
Encouragement was to be found for the home team in the form of the United line-up.
With Juan Mata, Scott McTominay and Nemanja Matic in the side, this was a United team that looked a little ponderous and wooden before the game even started.
West Ham offer greater invention these days and are a little more reliable now that some of their more capricious players — Marko Arnautovic and Javier Hernandez to name two — have left.
They no longer look to the injuryprone Jack Wilshere for salvation either — he began on the bench — and instead have the wit and imagination of felipe Anderson and Andriy Yarmolenko.
Those two creative players are now in their second season in the English game and it shows. At the base of midfield, Mark Noble and Declan Rice were both impressive.
Noble just shaded it, even if he was lucky not to be sent off for a lunge at Aaron Wan-Bissaka not long before he won the free-kick that allowed Aaron Cresswell to curl in the decisive second goal.
At that point, United were still in the game but only just.
Solskjaer’s team didn’t create a chance of note in the first half and went in a goal down when West Ham slowly gathered some momentum to score in the 44th minute.
Noble sees so much of the ball for his team and rarely wastes it.
Looking to pass down the line just before half-time, he instead had a glance inside and played a square pass to Anderson.
This is where opportunity emerged. Anderson saw Yarmolenko in half a yard of space and delivered a pass that needed to be controlled instantly and struck purely. The Ukrainian managed both, moving the ball inside to place Harry Maguire off balance and then striking a low shot across David de Gea and inside the far post with great accuracy.
A goal to lift a team and stir a game, the second half was more lively, more competitive.
United were slightly more dangerous, but only sporadically and the contest was eventually decided by a flurry of activity in the final half hour.
De Gea denied Anderson with his knee at his near-post in the 62nd minute and then, almost immediately, Lukasz fabianski saved brilliantly from Maguire at the other end after the defender’s header from a corner came back to him on his right foot on the angle of the six-yard box.
An equaliser for United at that stage would have changed the whole feeling of this game.
But fabianski, once an uncertain presence at Arsenal, has proved a very good purchase for West Ham and evidence perhaps that some goalkeepers do take time to mature.
That was to be United’s last chance and West Ham finally skewered them with six minutes left.
Young’s foul on Noble was clumsy and Cresswell’s execution, high to De Gea’s left, was perfect.
As West Ham’s club staff released bubbles on to the field, swathes of United’s travelling support headed for the stadium exits.
It takes a lot to turn off the club’s away fans but this United are testing everybody’s patience. It may get worse before it gets better but we have been saying that for a while.
This is a decline that feels terminal.
WEST HAM (4-2-3-1): Fabianski 7.5; Fredericks 6 (Zabaleta 80min), Diop 7, Ogbonna 7, Cresswell 7; NOBLE 8, Rice 7; Yarmolenko 7.5 (Snodgrass 89), Fornals 6.5, Anderson 7 (Wilshere 70, 6); Haller 6.5.
Subs not used: Roberto, Balbuena, Sanchez, Ajeti. Scorers: Yarmolenko 44, Cresswell 84. Booked: Ogbonna, Noble. Manager: Manuel Pellegrini 8. MANCHESTER UNITED (4-2-3-1): De Gea 6; Wan-Bissaka 6, Maguire 6, Lindelof 5.5, Young 5; Matic 5 (Fred 71, 6), McTominay 5; Pereira 6, Mata 5 (Gomes 81), James 6; Rashford 4 (Lingard 61, 6). Subs not used: Romero, Rojo, Tuanzebe, Chong. Booked: Young, Mata. Manager: Ole Gunnar Solskjaer 5. Referee: Anthony Taylor 6. Attendance: 59,936.