ASWRETCHEDAS ANYTHINGSEEN UNDERJOSE
There was no fan in a Grim reaper costume waving an imitation scythe behind the away dug-out, as there had been in this stadium precisely five years ago when Manchester United’s defeat brought the curtain down on David Moyes’ unhappy time at the helm.
Yet you still walked away wondering whether Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is any more equal to this task than the three managers who have walked among ghosts at the club since Sir Alex Ferguson stepped away.
Solskjaer’s assistant Mike Phelan — soon to be the technical director — looked the picture of dressed- down informality in his United shorts before the game. But this was a display to shake United’s senior management from the complacency of imagining that by restoring the old guard, the old ways will simply follow.
It was desperate — as wretched as anything witnessed under Jose Mourinho. Incalculably worse than the performance that earned Moyes the sack.
Solskjaer said all the right things afterwards. United’s players must do more, work more, train more. There was his customary referencing of ‘Sir Alex’ and the old days. But when asked if his players cared enough, he was temporarily lost for words.
his team ran almost five miles less than everton and have covered less distance than the opposition in 15 of the 17 games they have played under Solskjaer.
Gary Neville’s sense of outrage extended beyond his volcanic reaction during that 2-0 defeat here on easter Day 2014, when he was also commentating on the match.
his observations that there is ‘Japanese knotweed at the club attacking the foundations’ did not extend to a critique of the manager, but Solskjaer certainly has questions to answer.
There was no more intensity after the break than before it.
The substitutions at the halfway point — Scott McTominay and Ashley Young for Fred and Phil Jones — did not quicken the pulse, in a game which United had needed to win to further their search for a top-four finish. This result puts that notion to bed.
The manager’s nuanced defence of himself in the aftermath included the reminder that United would not even have been talking about a top-four finish, were it not for the winning run which accompanied his arrival at Old Trafford.
But it is one thing to create an environment in which players feel free, released from the suffocating negativity of Mourinho.
It is something entirely different to build the necessary edge they fear a little. That was the balance Ferguson struck for so long.
everton’s part in this story was hugely significant. They have now beaten Chelsea, Arsenal and United here without conceding since the goalless draw against Liverpool last month which proved so galvanising.
The collective cost of Bernard and Lucas Digne, monumental contributors here, has been less than £30m. Proof, as Ferguson always said, that you do not need to spend lots of money to build a collective. Gylfi Sigurdsson again made his own £40m price tag — once scoffed at — look modest. Morgan Schneiderlin, a United outcast not always beloved of many in this city, was integral.
As the game was claimed by the side who were sharper, stronger and wiser, you wondered — yet again — how on earth United have managed to squander all those millions since Ferguson walked away.
The only three remnants of the United team from easter Day 2014 were David de Gea, Chris Smalling and Jones and that seemed significant.
De Gea, the only player of consistent world class in United’s post-Ferguson era, is the one they managed to keep against all the odds. Smalling and Jones are the pairing they somehow never managed to lose.
They are no more players of world class — Manchester United class — than they were when Ferguson signed them and their continued
presence is a metaphor for how a club once feared across the nation has become so terribly average.
The pair had both made elementary errors — Jones conceding a needless corner, Smalling driving a 20-yard pass out of play — when the latter’s failure to cope with a long throw by Digne was the precursor to the home team going ahead.
Dominic Calvert-Lewin eased above the defender, navigating the header which Richarlison dispatched into the net with a scissor-kick, as Victor Lindelof’s powers of reaction also failed him. It was the Brazilian’s 13th Premier League goal of the season — a tally not one of United’s strikers has matched. United could not offer a fraction of the intensity. Paul Pogba, largely invisible, conjured a solitary diagonal cross-field pass for Marcus Rashford, who lifted the ball over the bar with the outside of his right foot having ventured into the Everton box.
Romelu Lukaku’s race against Seamus Coleman for a ball near the right touchline told its own story. The diminutive player won it, to the delight of the home support.
A Nemanja Matic pass for the Belgian in the early stages of the second half, when a Ferguson United would have been nursing bitter indignation, escaped his control. And yet there were also times when the forward’s anonymity owed as much to his team-mates’ lack of intuition.
When he raced into penalty-box space, anticipating a Young pass early in the second half, the ball was played to the space he had just left. When Lukaku played for the Merseysiders, Everton’s midfielders understood him far better than that.
The defence was the source of most concern, though. Everton’s opener was the 45th goal the visiting side had conceded — more than in any other Manchester United Premier League campaign. United were vulnerable every time Everton ran at them.
Digne eased away from Jones to establish the opportunity which doubled Everton’s lead. He located Sigurdsson, who was allowed several yards of space to run into as Matic stood off. The Icelander struck a shot from 30 yards, to De Gea’s right, which crept just inside the post. The goalkeeper might have done better though the cardinal sin was Matic’s.
The sight of Jones injuring himself, in the process of ploughing wildly into the excellent Bernard, seemed to say everything. His removal seemed a blessing, though Everton simply continued where they had left off.
Digne extended the lead four minutes before the hour, allowing a ball punched out by De Gea to bounce once before lashing it back past him, under no real challenge from an advancing Anthony Martial.
Sigurdsson was integral to the fourth, nutmegging Lindelof during an exquisite exchange of possession down the left before rolling the ball in for substitute Theo Walcott to finish.
It would have been five, had De Gea not sprinted across his line to kick away a corner which Sigurdsson almost sent directly in.
By the end, the travelling United fans had found their voices and their old Solskjaer anthems, though many will have left with questions about whether he is up to such a task.
The manager had said that United needed a reality check. He did not imagine anything remotely as brutal as this.
EVERTON (4-2-3-1) Pickford 6; Coleman 7, Keane 6, Zouma 6.5, Digne 7 (Jagielka 84min); Schneiderlin 6, Gueye 6.5 (McCarthy 76); Richarlison 6.5 (Walcott 51, 6.5), SIGURDSSON 8.5, Bernard 7.5; Calvert-Lewin 6.5.
Subs not used: Stekelenburg, Tosun, Davies, Lookman. Scorers: Richarlison 13, Sigurdsson 28, Digne 56, Walcott 64. Booked: Gueye. Manager: Marco Silva 8. MANCHESTER UTD (4-1-2-3) De Gea 6.5; Dalot 6, Smalling 5.5, Jones 5 (Young 46, 6), Lindelof 6; Matic 5.5; Fred 5.5 (McTominay 46, 6), Pogba 6; Rashford 6 (Perreira 77), Lukaku 5, Martial 6. Subs not used: Romero, Sanchez, Mata, Lingard. Booked: McTominay. Manager: Ole Gunnar Solskjaer 6.