Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
BLUE IT BIG TIME, UNITED
DOMINIC CALVERT-LEWIN’S injury-time goal rescued Everton and dealt a huge blow to United’s title hopes.
The England striker (left) grabbed his 18th goal of the season just as United looked set to move level on points with leaders Manchester City.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer will be furious as they blew a 2-0 half-time lead. But then goals by Abdoulaye Doucoure and James Rodriguez brought Everton level. Scott McTominay restored United’s lead, only for Calvert-Lewin to break United hearts in injury time.
OLE GUNNAR SOLSKJAER, a character who has absorbed Manchester United’s history and traditions, wanted a fitting performance.
Sixty-three years after the Munich Air Disaster, he wanted to honour those who lost their lives in the tragedy, honour those who will always be remembered, never forgotten.
And never mind the ups and downs of this fascinating game, his players did Solskjaer proud and that is all he could ask for.
Not with their defending, perhaps, but they did perform in a way that actually honoured what the club has stood for throughout most of its history.
Enjoy the football, play with a bit of style.
And what could have been more stylish than Marcus Rashford, the young man who represents his institution with such distinction, coaxing the most delicious of crosses on to Edinson’s head?
What could have been more stylish than Cavani’s textbook header?
What could have been more stylish than a Bruno Fernandes goal scored with all the brilliance and arrogance of an Eric Cantona?
There was a bit of attacking swagger about this United – not overdone but there all the same.
There was an audacity encapsulated in the Fernandes goal that is actually relatively new to this Solskjaer side. This was the Norwegian’s 100th game as a Premier League manager, the first 18 coming during his undistinguished opening spell at Cardiff City.
It is fair to say his career in the bucket seat has been a bit of a slow burner.
And still, it is a stretch to suggest he has ingrained a philosophy into this United side.
It is pleasant and reasonably fair, like his good self, but you haven’t gone away talking about a Solskjaer side in the way you have spoken about a Guardiola side or a Klopp side.
On the back of a nine-goal win and with a fair array of attacking tal
ent, it seems a strange thing to say, but they have not always been overly adventurous.
But with his trust in the full-backs strengthening all the time, Solskaer’s approach is becoming far easier on the eye, far closer to the United ways he knows so well.
And in Cavani (left), he has a centre-forward very much in Old Trafford traditions.
Pretty lethal.
Solskjaer seemed to be a little sluggish in putting his faith in such an established operator but maybe he was just getting him accustomed to the hurly-burly of the Premier League.
He need not have been worried on that score. Cavani was always going to cope.
English football has a tendency towards insularity and Cavani has always been a superstar that many here did not quite get.
It was the same with Zlatan Ibrahimovic until he strutted his stuff with United and Cavani is treading a similar path.
He is an outstanding all-round forward and one of the best headers of a ball in recent times.
It helps when you have the sort of delivery provided by Rashford for the opener – but it also helps when you can read the game as well as the Uruguayan is able to.
And it helps when you have great technique.
In Cavani and Fernandes they have two different operators with equally brilliant technique.
The nonchalance before, during and after the Fernandes hit was, indeed, pure Cantona. But maybe that nonchalance spread through the ranks, to ill effect.
Maybe the swagger became complacency as, first, David de Gea presented Abdoulaye Doucoure with a tap-in and then the entire defence stood and watched James Rodriguez laser in a leftfooted equaliser.
Maybe this United team is not good enough to get too cocksure.
But while they were too easily exposed in the second half here – allowing Dominic Calvert-Lewin to snatch a point after Scott McTominay had restored the United lead – they continued to produce attacking combinations that suggested Solskjaer is slowly developing a unit that will do its best to honour the history and traditions so poignantly relevant to this emotional day.