Tom Hopkinson

been down on his luck of late, struggling in front of goal.

And on a day when he might have filled his boots and rediscovered the confidence he appears to have lost, he suffered more misfortune through a clash of heads with Wesley Hoedt that will almost certainly rule him out of this week’s games with Everton and Derby.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic wasn’t in the match day squad for the Saints’ visit as he continues to work his way back from injury.

And while Pogba did play his performance was far short of what his manager and his team need it to be.

Giving him a season to get used to the Premier League seemed fair enough despite the £89million price tag when he returned to United from Juventus.

But these are the sort of games he should be running and if United are going to finish second — Chelsea leapfrogged them yesterday — he needs to step up to the mantle between now and May.

For United, 2018 needs to be the Year of the Pog.

Flashes

He needs to take on the role of talisman, as Kevin De Bruyne has done down the road for City, and start producing the moments that earn United points when everyone else has run out of ideas.

He certainly has the talent and their are still flashes of it, still glimpses of it, when he rakes a pass 60 yards with pinpoint accuracy.

Or when he steps around an opponent or two with a nonchalance that suggests they don’t deserve to be sharing a pitch with him.

But they are too few and far between at the moment, and it is costing United.

To be fair to Pogba, it was similar all over the park.

Henrikh Mkhitaryan produced a couple of decent crosses, one which should have been converted by a Jesse Lingard header.

But Mkhitaryan was also guilty of wasting at least two great opportunities to pick out team-mates in oceans of space.

Both crosses were so far from their intended target it