Raging Noble escapes red
Unable or unwilling to give one another a game, these two tired defensive teams did at least provide us all with a fight when Mark Noble briefly lost the plot and squared up to Paul Pogba in a moment of aggravation as unexpected as a scrap in a quiet country pub.
Before then two five-men defences had faced off in a game of pitifully little ambition involving a Jose Mourinho master plan which involved expending as little energy as possible for the return of the single point. That was the minimum the Manchester United manager said that he had come for to ensure that the last game of the season at Old Trafford could run smoothly with second place already secured.
It had been going to plan for Mourinho with precious little of note having happened when, with three minutes of the regulation 90 to go, Pogba fouled Cheikhou Kouyate, Noble fouled Pogba, Pogba reciprocated and within seconds it had escalated surprisingly. The West Ham captain was giving away around a foot in height when he went chest-to-chest with his opponent but it did not stop him grabbing the Frenchman’s face, as if he was going to try to scale him rather than fight him.
It should have been a red card for the West Ham captain, while Pogba, for all the sneakiness of the foul that had preceded it, did well to keep his cool, perhaps with the FA Cup final a week on Saturday in mind. Jonathan Moss, the referee, instead took the easy route out and booked both of them – and at the final whistle Noble went over to make peace with an expression of mild embarrassment.
There could yet be a Football Association charge for substitute Andy Carroll, who came in the second wave and might even have thrown a punch at Luke Shaw, although he escaped punishment on the night. It had so nearly been one of those nights when nothing happens and no one seems to care, when two teams were content to defend and the game ebbed away into moves that went nowhere.
When it came to the fight, Mourinho was indifferent, saying that from what he had seen of the replays “it looks like Paul and Noble are in love – hugs and kisses and changing shirts”. All he cared about was the point to ensure second place and the careful husbanding of resources ahead of the Cup final against Chelsea that will do much to define his season.
It was for that reason he was making defensive substitutions in the last few minutes, breaking up the rhythm of a match that barely had a rhythm in the first place. “Any team that goes to this kind of match where you need something to get some objective, you fight for that,” Mourinho said.
“The best way to fight for the point was to try to win the match and be safe, which was what we tried. But when the game goes to 70, 75 minutes, you don’t win, you don’t lose, you do the job. You get the point. You finish second and you can face the game on Sunday with a different perspective. We deserved a point, we deserved second position. When it is not possible to be champions, second is the best available, which was what we got.”
Mourinho will play Sergio Romero in goal against Watford and Michael Carrick will captain the team in the last game of his playing career before he joins the coaching staff at Old Trafford. Then it will be about the long run-in to the FA Cup final a week on Saturday, which, after a season when they have trailed far behind Manchester City, will sound a different note.
Last night was not helped by the indifference with which the crowd regarded this final match of the season at the unloved stadium, where another mediocre Premier League campaign ends not so much with a whimper as a sigh.
The final-week sweep of all those games that should have happened at other times is often a painful exercise in who-cares, but this one seemed particularly poignant, falling on the second anniversary of the final game at Upton Park.
It was the same two teams who contested that epic goodbye, that had started with Jesse Lingard Snapchatting the attack on the away-team bus and ended with a rattling good comeback and a 3-2
West Ham win that no one expected. David Moyes praised his players for their performance. “If we couldn’t get three points than we were going to make sure we got one,” he said – it was that kind of night.
Moyes said he thought little of the fight itself. “It had never been that type of game,” he said. “It came out of nowhere.”
Marko Arnautovic did his best and was better when Carroll joined him in attack in the second half. Adrian, the goalkeeper, denied Alexis Sanchez and Jesse Lingard twice, also pushing Shaw’s drive onto the post. Yet it was the fight that people will remember about this night, if they remember anything at all.