LAST-GASP IBRA SAVES RED FACES
Ibra saves United but draw is damaging for Mourinho
A TROPHY in the cabinet and a European title there to be won but this is turning ordinary.
Yes, Manchester United deserved the late equaliser, despatched from the spot by Zlatan Ibrahimovic after an Ashley Williams handball.
Yes, they are putting together an impressively long unbeaten run – but it remains ordinary.
Mourinho ended up scrambling for solutions to the problem that has stalked him all season. Finding a team with an attacking potency that can make them a real force.
With his resources, his experience, his self-proclaimed talent, he should have done it by now. Instead, a reliance on that late equaliser against an Everton who looked like collecting an unlikely win after a Phil Jagielka goal, was typical of Mourinho’s debut season. All a bit laborious.
And this was meant to be a refreshed United … that is if a 35-yearold’s return can refresh. Wherever he drifts on a football pitch, possession is pulled to Ibrahimovic, like water to a plughole, but he only knows one position – the centre of attention.
The only surprise was that one of his first touches on a return from suspension was not a scoring one, unusual hesitancy allowing Ashley Williams to lunge and block.
While the Swede’s season has been productive, there is a theory he can squeeze the brakes on United momentum. They were laboured in the early stages against and Everton team clearly peeved by post-derby pelters. Romelu Lukaku and Ross Barkley were more convincing in the opening quarter than they had been in the entire meeting with Liverpool.
They were bolder in possession than at Anfield but United’s defence is tested so little at Old Trafford that any attacking from opposition outside the top six has a shock factor.
So it proved, Jagielka jabbing Everton ahead after 22 minutes with a very soft goal. From United’s standpoint, it is hard to know where to start. With Marouane Fellaini for watching Ashley Williams peel away to meet a corner? With Marcos Rojo for admiring the way the mistimed header floated downwards? With David de Gea for letting the bizarrely hooked effort to pop through his legs?
It was a nice piece of improvisation from Jagielka but it still a defensive shambles. But at least it was one that quickened a pedestrian game into an enjoyable canter, Everton’s ambition giving United plenty of counter-encouragement and it needed two good pieces of resistance from Joel Robles to preserve a half-time lead.
Robles was another on Anfield go-slow but he denied Daley Blind with a brave save as Ander Herrera hit the crossbar with the loose ball.
From outside the area, Herrera then allowed Robles to prove he does do full-stretch.
Full stretch was the theme of the second half, the Toffees at it trying to resist a foe now featuring Paul Pogba and United at it to close down counter-attacks.
Pogba will be dragging that price tag around like a heavy trailer for some time but his instinctive header gave the Everton bar another rattle.
When the bar was not having its say, the assistant referee was, Ibrahimovic no more than a top-knot offside when he headed home with 20 minutes left.
By then Mourinho had shuffled and re-shuffled. He even sent on Luke Shaw. To no avail. It all smacked of desperation and ordinariness but when Shaw, of all people, shot, Williams leant and handled it and Zlatan made sure he ended matters as the centre of attention.