Rebirth in Turin just
Mourinho is shorn of the sort of defensive pairing club could rely on under Ferguson
CHIEF SPORTS WRITER
Shocking stat alert. The last time Manchester United conceded more than 20 goals after 12 league games was in 1966, a year well known to Sir Bobby Charlton, who laid a wreath on the pitch with Mike Summerbee before this game.
Jose Mourinho’s worst nightmare is a porous team, a wonky defence, a hefty goalsconceded column. It goes against everything he stands for: stubbornness, compactness, parsimony around your own net.
Mourinho’s starting point as a manager is to ban the opposition from scoring. Then you put the other bits on top. But with 21 goals given away in 12 league outings, and a goal difference of minus one, the apparent rebirth at Juventus in midweek felt like an illusion here. United are a mid-table team primarily because they are too easy to score against.
One clean sheet in a dozen games is the polar opposite of a Mourinho side. We can be sure he is coaching the daylights out of his back four (and midfielders) in the wilds of Carrington, so the problem must be one of quality, of individual ability, after a long phase in which United have failed to sign top-class defenders.
Where is their Virgil van Dijk, their Aymeric Laporte, their Toby Alderweireld? Centre-back pairings – integral to United’s success since the early 1990s – have become a game of pick and hope, of guess and rotation.
Even with the obligatory proviso that City can slash gaps in any team, and bamboozle them with how they move the ball, three more breaches of United’s net were in line with a pattern Mourinho has been labouring against all season.
The United manager’s 300th Premier League game proved what people have been saying since Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic left the scene. Chris Smalling. Victor Lindelof, Marcos Rojo and Eric Bailly are simply not at that level, while Ashley Young, a fine pro, is not a conventional full-back.
Luke Shaw is sharp again at left-back but, overall, United’s back line has a quality deficit, even with Ander Herrera scurrying around in front of it and Nemanja Matic coasting around in sentry mode.
Every punter in the red half of this city knows Mourinho wanted to buy centre-backs this summer. Asked about that, he refused to deny it, but also stuck up for Lindelof and Smalling, or “Smiling”, as Pep Guardiola referred to him.
“But I don’t think it was the game to touch on that point,” Mourinho replied to the centreback question. “I think Victor and Chris had a positive performance.”
Neither was particularly bad – just at a level below what you would call commanding. That word is the most pertinent. United