United suffer harsh lesson with Maguire’s late strike
It was such a simple problem to fix that when the final ball came into Manchester United’s box, in the fourth minute of time added on at the end of the game, it was extraordinary that Chris Smalling, wincing, immobile and in discomfort was supposed to be holding together the defence.
On the touchline, Jose Mourinho later said that he saw catastrophe approaching and tried to avert it, calling over Ashley Young to pass on instructions that presumably involved getting Smalling away from danger. But when Harry Maguire came rumbling in at the back post to meet Marc Albrighton’s cross it was still Smalling who was the man in position to stop him when really the United centre-half should have been halfway up the pitch.
With the players failing to interpret his instructions correctly, and more points dropped in the gap to the Premier League leaders Manchester City, Mourinho took the last well-honed option available to him: he blamed his players in spectacular fashion.
His post-match excoriation of them for being “childish” and having a “lack of maturity” was not on the scale of the attack on his Chelsea players at the King Power two years earlier, but it was not that far off. He may yet have a point that any team which does not know that an injured centre-half is a hostage to fortune is not one that can be trusted, but even so these public admonishments have become a feature of this stage of his career.
Another view is that against a 10man team, deprived of Daniel Amartey for two yellow cards after just 13 minutes on the pitch as a second-half substitute, United did what they always do when defending a lead. They fell back and defended, and the reason that Smalling could not be replaced was that Mourinho had brought on Ander Herrera and Henrikh Mkhitaryan to try to pack the midfield and keep Leicester out rather than go on the attack.
Of course, most managers do not keep a substitute in reserve for injuries like Smalling’s but if one uses this strategy enough then eventually it can sting. United missed chances – Anthony Martial, Jesse Lingard and the first substitute Marcus Rashford – but they also invited Leicester to attack when they could have been much more forthright in seeing out the game.
For Claude Puel it was another minor triumph, a point won in spite of Amartey’s “naivety”, as the French coach described it. Leicester are now eighth and they took the lead through a brilliant counter-attacking goal made by Riyad Mahrez for Jamie Vardy, before Juan Mata’s two goals gave United a lead they deserved by the hour mark.
It was a breathless, often open game and United had to make most of the running in the first half. Paul Pogba was captain, a decision that Mourinho denied was related to anything but his long connection with the club.
United warmed up the goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel before they were caught by an unusual, but effective counter-attack.
It had begun with a United corner that Leicester cleared, Albrighton picking out Vardy, and from there the entertainment started. Vardy, in his own half and his back to goal, knocked the ball down for Wilfred Ndidi and spun around to embark on his own run forward – but more of that later. The most interesting part was Mahrez’s role.
The Algerian had begun in the wide right position, often drifting inside – but with Demarai Gray in the hole behind Vardy. On this occasion, Mahrez had been left on his own in attack and chased the ball long ball forward from Ndidi with Smalling in pursuit. Mahrez seemed to have read the flight and knew that it would not run on once it dropped, allowing it to bounce and ducking under it to double-back.
It felt like the break was over, but what Mahrez had seen was that he and Smalling were still alone and Vardy was coming down the left channel quicker than any United opponent. For what seemed like an age, but was no more than a second or so, Smalling stood off Mahrez, knees bent, waiting for the surge forward. Mahrez, on other hand, was waiting for Vardy, who duly appeared at his left shoulder, was played in by his team-mate and beat David De Gea into the far corner.
United got their equaliser five minutes before half-time when Leicester slowed to a walk on the edge of their area and failed to apply any pressure to the away side’s passing in front of them. United probed for their opening and eventually found it, Jesse Lingard playing Martial’s ball first time for Mata to pick his spot past Schmeichel.
United got their second on the hour and you had to wonder if Schmeichel could have done better with Mata’s nicely flighted, but hardly unstoppable, left foot free-kick.
Mata dropped it over the wall and to the left of Schmeichel, who reached for it with his right hand, having got his footwork wrong. Before then, Romelu Lukaku had set up Martial to lash one over before and later he would judge a very nice throughball to Lingard who went round Schmeichel and clipped the post with his shot. “Joke chances,” Mourinho said later, to emphasise his side’s profligacy.
Amartey had come on for Simpson before the hour and picked up his first booking shortly after that for clipping Young. Bearing that in mind, his challenge on Rashford on 73 minutes, with his team chasing the game and having re-organised to accommodate Shinji Okazaki, was a dreadful miscalculation. The referee Jonathan Moss had no choice but to dismiss him.
Rashford should have scored when Pogba’s exceptional ball into him from the right to the left channel put the striker in on goal. He opted to go round Schmeichel who got a hand on the ball and pushed it away and referee Moss judged that the challenge was legal. Then in the final moment of the game, Albrighton floated in a free-kick and Maguire crashed in at the back post as Smalling winced in pain