JOSE CRUSHES
Mourinho frustrates Liverpool as United snatch a point from Anfield bore draw
THEY may talk about this game for some time to come. They will talk about the day Jose Mourinho brought Manchester United to Anfield and almost nothing happened.
Has there been a worse game between these fabled clubs? If there has, it is hard to recall.
This was supposed to be the night when Mourinho brought United to Merseyside and laid his reputation on the line.
It was supposed to be the night when his pragmatic methods were eased into the shadows by Jurgen Klopp’s hard-running, dynamic Liverpool team.
It did not happen and we should have known it would not.
Mourinho has achieved too much in his gilded career, he has poured too much into his life’s work, to submit to popular whim.
As such, he emerged from this night the happier man.
Maybe the moral victory was his on an evening in which Liverpool brought just two saves from United goalkeeper David de Gea.
What was beyond dispute, though, was the poor quality of this game.
Liverpool came to life in the second half, raising the volume at their reconfigured stadium. United, for their part, were the better side before the interval. There was no cut and thrust, though. No punch and counter-punch. This was just a poor game of football.
So much for the self-styled best league in the world.
Klopp had laughed beforehand at suggestions that Mourinho may come here and attempt to close the game down.
‘I can’t see them playing only in their own half,’ the Liverpool boss said of United.
Even he could not have imagined that United would spend so much of the first 30 minutes in Liverpool territory, though.
The last time Manchester United had been here — in the Europa League last spring under Louis van Gaal — they were all but swallowed whole by a rampant Liverpool side.
Early on last night, however, it was Liverpool who had to do the chasing. It was the home team who found it impossible to get the ball down and play.
Mourinho, as we should have expected, picked an unusual line-up for the occasion.
Marouane Fellaini started, as did Ashley Young. United began with cohesion and certainty as Liverpool struggled to show their true selves.
In the opening minutes, all we seemed to see were fouls. There were five in the first five minutes as the game bore a somewhat disjointed and fractious look.
Mourinho would have been delighted about that. The one thing the United manager knew his team could not afford was for Liverpool to get off to a flyer.
Things soon got better for United, though, as they passed the ball neatly in and around Liverpool players, who looked as though they needed to be re-introduced to each other after the international break.
At times, Klopp’s players could not even perform the basics.
Emre Can turned a first touch into a tackle before Jordan Henderson erred similarly in presenting the ball to Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
As time wore on, the one thing United did not have to show for their control of the game was a goal or, indeed, a decent shot on target.
Ibrahimovic ballooned an early free-kick into the Kop before Paul Pogba did likewise from open play.
A cross from Marcus Rashford on the right did present Liverpool goalkeeper Loris Karius with a problem in the 25th minute but the German dealt with the threat well on his Anfield debut, diving to push the ball to safety on the far side.
On the touchline, Klopp was showing signs of concern and it was no surprise. This was not his usual Liverpool side he was watching, not in terms of their play anyway.
Can did float one good, long pass over Eric Bailly’s shoulder and on to the toe of Daniel Sturridge in the tenth minute, only for the forward to fail with a tricky piece of control.
Beyond that, Liverpool were not evident as an attacking threat until they grew into the game in the last ten minutes of the half.
Indeed, it could be argued they created the best — maybe the only — opportunity of a poor half as a deep cross from Can allowed Robert Firmino to head in to De Gea’s hands from an angle at the far post.
Referee Anthony Taylor, who was the subject of so much unnecessary fuss before the game because he hails from Manchester, was having a decent night.
Not until the 44th minute, in fact, did he have to make a meaningful intervention, booking United defender Bailly for bundling over Sturridge.
United’s Young was also booked, for dissent, before half-time, prior to Liverpool keeper Karius trying to liven things up.
His contributions had hitherto been assured, but in presenting the ball to Rashford in the 48th minute, he gave United a real chance.
The young England international showed a rare lack of composure, however, and he played the ball forward to Ibrahimovic who was clearly offside.
As quickly as it had appeared, the opportunity was lost. Typical of this game in so many ways.
Soon after, Ibrahimovic had a real chance. Pogba had been quiet, but his shimmy and cross from the right were superb as the hour approached and United’s Swedish forward should have done an awful lot more than head the ball back across goal. It was a great chance.
Liverpool’s first attacking contribution of the second period was to make a total hash of a training ground free-kick.
Moments later, Can wriggled free in the penalty area to bring a wonderful low save from De Gea. Were we finally about to witness something approaching an almost watchable game?
It did improve. That was beyond dispute. Adam Lallana came on and Firmino was pushed through the middle. Before long, the initiative was theirs and the save De Gea produced to deny Phillipe Coutinho from 25 yards with 18 minutes left was out of this world.
If only the same could have been said of season’s most dire, most over-hyped, game so far.