UNITED REMAIN ROTTEN
After 70 minutes of sheer dismay, Jose’s men finally fight back but...
THEY said that Jose Mourinho was a dead man walking. They said that what e v e r the result against Newcastle, the manager who was once special, the man who was once the king of our game, would be gone by the ti me Manchester United played again.
And for 70 minutes of this game, the biggest team in this country turned in a performance of such abject misery that they might as well have had a corpse for a manager and cadavers for players. Then, just when it seemed that all was lost, the players who seemed to have f orsaken t heir manager breathed new life into him.
Whether their stirring comeback from 2-0 down to 3-2 winners will be enough to save him remains to be seen. It was tempting to think that United and Mourinho were only saved here because they finally came up against a club even more dysfunctional than they are.
And for almost three quarters of this match, Mourinho played silly games with his substitutions and his players played as if they had no love for their boss and no pride in their shirt. They played as if they had given up. They played as if they wanted Mourinho gone.
But in t he end, t hey roused t hemselves. In t he end, some instinct rose up inside them and they dredged up the victory that may prolong Mourinho’s tenure. Whether that just prolongs the agony of a managerial regime that seems to have run out of energy and run out of friends is a question for another day.
The reality is that this was still pretty desperate stuff from United. On the weekend when Liverpool and Manchester City play out a top-of-the-table clash, this was poor man’s fare.
United were lucky Newcastle were s o di r e a nd s o low on c o n f i d e n c e . Thei r c o meback flatters them. They are still a world away from the best teams in the division. This was just a papering over of the cracks. This was a three-goal rally that makes things more difficult for Ed Woodward and his embattled Old Trafford regime. Defeat by Newcastle would have made it easier for him to end the agony.
After the international break, United face Chelsea in the Premier League, Juventus in the Champions League twice and the derby against Manchester City in their next six fixtures. None of those sides will show the same mercy Newcastle showed them here.
None of them will fail to exploit the fault-lines that are still obvious everywhere within this divided club. When Mourinho made his last substitution in the 67th minute, he brought on Alexis Sanchez for Marcus Rashford, who had just run the ball out of play.
Mourinho turned his back on Rashford as the young forward left the field and bent down to pick up a bottle of water instead. Rashford ran straight to the bench. Rel a t i o n s h i p b r e a k d o wn was everywhere.
Petty l i t t l e melodramas are everywhere at Old Trafford now, of course. Mourinho puts one fire out and another one starts somewhere else.
Earlier in the week, his captain, A n t o n i o Va l e n c i a , liked an Instagram post that called for Mourinho to be sacked. He recanted swiftly but not swiftly enough. When t h e Uni t e d t e a msheet appeared, Valencia was not on it. He was not even on the bench.
Despite t hat, Mourinho had strolled jauntily up the touchline before kick-off, affecting bonhomie and nonchalance. He waved at fans, s hook hands wit h Newcastle manager Rafa Benitez and even playfully squirted a jet of water over a cameraman from one of the drinks bottles lying around.
The smiles did not last long. After seven minutes, United failed to deal with an innocuous throw-in and, when Kenedy picked up the ball, Ashley Young allowed him to turn and Kenedy bent a left-foot shot around David De Gea from the edge of the box.
Mourinho’s mood was different now. He held out his hands wide in exasperation as United descended into disarray. ‘You’re getting sacked in the morning,’ the Newcastle fans sang at him, happy to forget their own troubles.
Three minutes later, Newcastle extended their lead. Once again, United’s defence was a shambles. The ball cannoned around on the edge of the area until it found Yoshinori Muto with his back to goal 12 yards out. It was Young, again, who allowed him to turn and he drilled a low shot past De Gea.
Even after the miserable start to t he s eason t hat United have endured, this felt surreal. Their players did not know where to look. They seemed beaten already. They l o o k e d c o wed a n d d e f e a t e d . Mourinho windmilled his arms on the touchline, trying to rouse them. For the most part, they averted their gaze.
Newcastle almost went three goals ahead after 18 minutes when Jonjo Shelvey let fly from 20 yards but De Gea scrambled to his right and pushed his shot wide.
A minute after that, Mourinho took drastic action by substituting Eric Bailly and bringing on Juan Mata.
That meant moving midfielder Scott McTominay to centre-half. McTominay has played t here before, of course, but he looked
dreadfully ill at ease and Newcastle targeted him. Not for the first time, it almost felt as if Mourinho was indulging in self-sabotage.
United should have got a goal back when Romelu Lukaku curled i n a cross from the right but Rashford glanced it wide with the goal at his mercy. United looked as if they did not have a clue what the manager wanted from t hem. ‘ You’re not special any more,’ Newcastle fans sang.
United had another her e s c a p e 1 2 minut e es s before half-time e when Shelvey won a header on the edge of their box and the United defence allowed it to sail through to Muto a few yards out. He nodded it on and De e Gea clawed it away at point-blank range.
At half-time, Mourinho nho tink tinkered again, dragging off McTominay, replacing him with Marouane Fellaini and moving Nemanja Matic into central defence. So Matic and McTominay had both played in central defence ahead of Victor Lindelof, who stayed on the bench. That is the same Lindelof who Mourinho paid £30 million for from Benf i c a . Fi v e minut e s a f t e r half-time, United spurned another golden chance to drag themselves back into the game. Martin Dubravka produced a superb save to keep out a deflected shot from Paul Pogba but he could only parry straight into the path of Matic. The goal gaped. Matic smashed it high over the crossbar. But with 20 minutes remaining, United finally got a goal back. Anthony Martial was tripped on the edge of the area and Mata curled curle the free-kick over the wall into the bottom corner. co Old Trafford revived r and, a few minutes m l a t e r, United were level. Martial was both architect and executioner e this t i me, e x c h a n g i n g passes pa with Pogba and then ramming his shot past Dubravka. D Newcast Newcastle were reeling now and United’s victory seemed almost inevitable. It came in the dying seconds of normal time when Sanchez nodded in a cross and Old Trafford went wild. The goal added some veneer to a club that still feels, as one of its greatest servants Gary Neville observed the previous night, rotten to the core.