United back up to speed but Jose will hit the brake
Do not adjust your set. Those red shirts darting and flashing across the pitch are Manchester United players. Four years of slow, ponderous, tactical football looked to have ended against West Ham and could be laid to rest against Swansea today.
Or so United’s supporters pray. For four seasons, Old Trafford has poured grumpy, underwhelmed home fans on to Sir Matt Busby Way and Sir Alex Ferguson Way: roads that memorialise positivity. Their main gripe is not to do with trophies. It has been the taking away of something they held dear. Manchester United teams were born to attack – and to attack fast. At home, they would overwhelm opponents with speed of thought and movement.
Quick play regressed under David Moyes, disappeared under Louis van Gaal and made no discernible comeback in
Jose Mourinho’s first season in charge. Mourinho’s signature win was the Europa League final victory over
Ajax in Stockholm. With Marouane Fellaini in disrupter mode, and United overpowering a virtual Ajax youth side, Mourinho watched a whiteboard plan return them to Champions League action. United’s supporters took the win – their second trophy of the campaign – with gratitude, but without pleasure. Nobody in there that night could know whether United would try to play that way again this season.
In the 4-0 win over West Ham, Romelu Lukaku (below) and Marcus Rashford took the handbrake off as United players posted three of the top four sprint speeds of the opening weekend (Paul Pogba was the other). But United fans expecting them to run like that every week are about to be disappointed.
A clue: Ander Herrera’s presence on the bench. The West Ham game was one Mourinho thought he could win well. Against top-six opponents, though, his game plan is unlikely to be “run them ragged,” however good the chemistry between Pogba, Rashford and Lukaku, whose dashes at a top speed of 21.5mph are a radical departure from late career Wayne Rooney or Zlatan Ibrahimovic. In the biggest games, Herrera will come back in, and a more tactical approach will return. Pace is an article of faith at United, from Ryan Giggs to Cristiano Ronaldo and Andrei Kanchelskis, who has just written an autobiography. In the foreword, Giggs writes of Kanchelskis: “He was quickquick. He was bloody-hell quick.” Giggs also says, tellingly: “Looking back at the footage of those years reminds me what great times they were when United attacked teams with pace and confidence.”
The yearning is there, and United now have more players who can feed the craving. Lukaku says of Rashford, “with me and Marcus, there is something special.” Lukaku’s arrival was cast by some as bad news for the England striker. Instead, it might have saved him from centreforward duties to concentrate on a supporting role based on pace. The restoration of their zest explains why 50.2 per cent of bets in the title race this week were for United, according to the bookie-monitors, Oddschecker.
United fans of my acquaintance see the last four years as a kind of vigil, in which they waited for the return of the entertaining football they love. The West Ham game was a start, but they should not expect it every week.
To Mourinho, football is not the circus.