LVG finds Memphis on his mind
GAMES of football at this exalted level can often be won by moments of rare quality, as this one almost was. Equally, small mistakes can change an outcome, as was ultimately the case here.
Wayne Rooney’s wonderful, crashing right-foot missile was a moment to cherish at St James’ Park last night. Struck true and sweet, it was a throwback moment for the England and Manchester United captain that looked to have given Louis van Gaal a season’s highlight away win.
Soon after, however, Rooney’s young team-mate Memphis Depay dallied in possession inside his own penalty area and within a split second the ball had been whipped from his toe by Newcastle midfielder Moussa Sissoko.
The ball did not find its way in to United’s goal for another 30 seconds. It was crossed in, cleared and then crossed and cleared again before Paul Dummett arrived to drill in a ferocious goal of his own. A 3-2 win had become a 3-3 draw for Van Gaal and his ailing United team and another few days of introspection will now be theirs.
Depay’s small error will be a feature of Van Gaal’s post-match analysis at Carrington today and, in a way, it is typical of this United team. You cannot rely on them to regularly play the kind of football their supporters expect. In fact, you just cannot rely on them at all.
United’s young Dutch forward will feel rather irritated to be singled out. Depay had, after all, contributed much that was good after coming on as a substitute.
For the second game running, he appeared to have played a defining role in a Rooney winning moment after ferrying the ball across the top of the penalty area in the build-up to United’s third goal.
The 21-year- old will learn soon enough, though, that these are the kind of mistakes you cannot afford if you are to make your way at a club like United.
The Barclays Premier League is not an environment in which you can switch your attention on and off like a lightbulb.
Ultimately, then, United flew home last night feeling a little aggrieved. Van Gaal — no doubt upset that a significant victory had been taken from him at the death — complained briefly about the referee, feeling that decisions had not gone his team’s way.
This was not a game influenced enormously by Mike Dean, however. Dean can be a little irritating with his expansive gestures and his posturing. At times he is the opposite of what a good referee should be in that he is just far too noticeable.
Here, though, he got most of the big decisions right. If he was given 10 replays of both penalties he awarded, he would doubtless award them again.
No, this was a game that slipped through United’s fingers largely because they remain a team that find it very difficult to control a game securely. Just as great United teams never looked as though they had lost a game until the final whistle blew, so this team never look as though they have won one.
Van Gaal’s United have many failings and much has been written about their lack of notable pace, their lack of imagination. More mundanely, however, United do not keep the ball well enough, they do not squeeze the opposition, they simply cannot close a game out efficiently enough.
For the home crowd, this was a wonderful night of helter- skelter football, preceded by the unveiling of new signing Jonjo Shelvey. Newcastle, typically, were full of mistakes of their own. Atypically, they were also bright with the ball, dangerous and dextrous on the counter-attack.
This was exactly the kind of night Steve McClaren and his team needed as they looked to build some impetus on the back of four rather demoralising 1-0 defeats. Time will tell what this comeback will do for them.
For United, however, this kind of night was exactly what they didn’t need. Good teams do not ease into a 2-0 lead and then allow themselves to be dragged back into a raging scrap. They do not find themselves involved in a game that could go either way with 20 minutes left. No, a good United team — indeed a good Van Gaal team — would have put this game to bed and the fact that they didn’t says much about their frailties ahead of Sunday’s visit to Liverpool. United supporters will have noticed their team slipped a place in the Premier League last night. They are sixth now, one behind West Ham and one ahead of Crystal Palace.
It is an adequate measure of their decline.