M6-2! REDS DRIVE LEEDS INTO THE GROUND
RAMPANT UNITED BLOW RIVALS AWAY INSIDE FIRST 20 MINUTES IN PULSATING CONTEST
“WE often score six but we seldom score ten,” United supporters boast. Six-goal routs are all too seldom from United, but they cut loose against their old patsy and must have wondered how they did not bring up double figures against Leeds.
In one mad minute of the second-half, United drew four saves from the Leeds ‘keeper Illan Meslier in a match where there were 40 attempts.
So has the real United resurfaced? This was their most ruthless and rampant performance of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s reign and he is now looking down on his predecessor, winless in three with Tottenham, having presided over the first six-goal haul at
Old Trafford in over nine years.
This spectacle was in keeping with the madcap matches played behind closed doors and Sir Alex Ferguson still seemed dissatisfied after United’s sixth, for undaunted Leeds replied through Stuart Dallas’ divine curler.
How United matchgoers would have loved to have gone through their repertoire of anti-Leeds rhetoric in the club’s biggest win over the Whites since 1959.
United are now third and many of their supporters are clinging to the game in hand at Burnley, a fixture that could be scheduled for the first week of January or as late as April. Win that, the dreamers stress, and they are two points off Liverpool.
That still seems as fantastical as it is fanciful. United were pitted against the most obliging opponents to stride out at Old Trafford since Arsenal were annihilated 8-2 in 2011. Even then, Leeds did not struggle for opportunities of their own.
United have fluctuated from appalling to absorbing within two home games in eight days and loose Leeds are not a reliable gauge of any team’s progress. Leicester away awaits on Boxing Day for United, yet the league’s second-placed side have been beaten four times on their own patch.
This could have been United’s fourth home league defeat before Christmas – an ignominious fate that last befell Frank O’Farrell in 1972 – though Solskjaer was in no peril of matching him. United have tallied at least four goals in three games against Leeds in the last 40 years and Solskjaer has been involved in all of them – as substitute (1996), goalscorer (2002) and manager (2020).
United have struggled to net five goals, never mind six, in league games at Old Trafford and have done so twice this calendar year.
“Come on Antho, come on DJ,” Harry Maguire demanded just past the hour at 4-1. Daniel James rifled in for just United’s second five-goal league haul since Boxing Day in 2011. “Brilliant, Danny,” Maguire roared.
James was the sole surprising selection in what was his first start since October 24 against a team he was so close to join
ing he inked a contract, posed with a shirt and was assigned a squad number.
Bielsa choreographed one of the most captivating victories at Old Trafford by an opponent in recent memory with Athletic Bilbao in 2012 and this was a dud of a sequel. United are now responsible for a fifth of the Premier League goals Leeds have shipped this season and though they are not necessarily destined for a return to the Championship their defence is of a tier two standard.
Liam Cooper, Leeds’s centre half and captain, at least had the gumption to stoop and score their first league goal in M16 since Alan Smith in February 2004, quelling
Bielsa’s incessant hollering of ‘Cooper’. Bielsa did not stop berating – or believing – even at 6-2.
Smith clutched the Leeds badge when he hared towards the away end nearly 17 years ago and time has diluted the rivalry. Jack Harrison, on loan from City, chummily embraced Marcus Rashford prior to the second-half.
United started as though their manager had made them aware they were 20 minutes away from going eight hours without a goal from open play at home and pillaged two inside the first 171 seconds, Scott McTominay emulating his manager in claiming a brace against Leeds.
United’s previous league goalscorer against Leeds was Paul Scholes and there were shades of Scholes’s ‘ghosting’ with the prompt second.
Within eight minutes, Leeds had fashioned two opportunities against United’s porous defence.
Solskjaer rebuked Luke Shaw for a lackadaisical pass Bamford finished from an offside position that would have made Filippo Inzaghi blush. The message filtered through to the rest of the United players and Fernandes clinically killed the contest before the 20-minute mark. Solskjaer was smiling and could have been forgiven for lighting a cigar.
For their legions of supporters, that’s the real United.