WHAT A COUPLE OF SCREAMERS!
Pickford sees double as United hit him with near-identical strikes
AT FULL-time there were clenched fists in the air from Paul Pogba and Marcos Rojo. That may have looked a little over the top after something as humdrum as a Premier League victory, but it served to indicate just how necessary this result was for Manchester United.
At United, a sticky run of results can escalate into a crisis very quickly and that was the road Jose Mourinho’s team were travelling when they arrived on Merseyside.
Draws against Leicester, Burnley and Southampton meant failure to win here would have equalled United’s worst return from a festive schedule.
At times, especially in the first half here at Goodison Park, United were not convincing. They were passive and they were lacking in energy. They also looked low on confidence.
But against an Everton team who were ultimately very disappointing, United took a grip of the game in the second half and eventually won it with two goals of the highest quality.
This is the thing about United. Even in these relatively fallow times, they still have great young talent in their squad.
Here, Pogba was the game’s best player, despite his apparent dislike of what might be termed as real tackling. By no small token of compensation, the 24-year-old Frenchman’s passing and vision were of a very high order.
And then there were the two goals; one from Anthony Martial and one from Jesse Lingard. Both were terrific and if they don’t make Mourinho smile a little then one wonders if anything ever will.
Despite their lack of menace in the first half, United were much better once the second period started.
For the first time in the game they had started to look threatening.
Inevitably, Pogba was involved. Receiving the ball on the left, a few yards outside the penalty area, he had options on both sides and runners arriving.
He was waiting for Martial, though, and when he flicked the ball across the top of the box into his teammate’s path, the United centre for- ward took a touch to control it before curling an effort with his right instep away from Jordan Pickford’s dive and into the Everton keeper’s top-left corner.
Pickford is a talented and improving young English goalkeeper and he had another good game here.
There was little he could do about that goal, however, and maybe even less about the one that Lingard curled beyond him about 20 minutes later.
This time the danger arrived after Everton had a throw-in.
The fact that the home team lost possession almost immediately will have irritated Goodison boss Sam Allardyce hugely, given that his team had just been threatening to equalise during a ten-minute spell that was their best of the game.
Once again, though, there was so much to admire about the goal. Good United teams have always seized on opponents’ mistakes clinically and here the players in red were all over Everton as soon as they won the ball by the left touchline.
Lingard still had much to do when the ball was played through to him.
The 25-year-old England international — who has been something of a shining light amid the Old Trafford gloom recently — was 35 yards from goal and had a defender, Michael Keane, in his way.
But Lingard eased past Keane as though he was not there and then he caressed the ball from under his feet with power and accuracy back into the same corner that Martial had found a little earlier.
One had to feel a little sorry for Pickford. Shots like this embarrass goalkeepers.
Lingard, meanwhile, is in such a rich vein of form that he believes he can score every time an opportunity presents itself.
He has scored seven times in his last nine games and it is the kind of run that will not have escaped the attention of England boss Gareth Southgate in a World Cup year.
Over the course of the game, United deserved their victory. Missing a whole host of players through injury and suspension, they began the game looking rather vulnerable but they were completely comfortable by the end.
That is to their credit, even if a better team than Everton would have taken advantage of their hesitancy early in the game.
Everton were the better team in the opening stages. They moved the ball around brightly as United failed to press them and with a little more quality in attacking areas they might have found a way through to trouble David de Gea.
Ultimately, though, they finished the game without having a shot on target and that was telling.
Everton were tepid in the second half and they only really roused themselves once United had taken the lead.
The introduction of James McCarthy and Aaron Lennon as substitutes helped them, however, and twice in a minute midway through the half they could have equalised.
The unmarked Oumar Niasse headed wide from Mason Holgate’s cross and Tom Davies shot against a defender’s legs when United found themselves in a penalty-box muddle almost immediately after.
But for a team supposedly improving, Everton were a real let-down.
Allardyce has never beaten Mourinho and has won only once in all his years squaring up to Manchester United.
At the outset, this looked like an opportunity to buck a trend.
Not last night. ‘Our attacking powers are limited,’ admitted
Allardyce. ‘We know that, and that is why i have worked so hard on keeping clean sheets.
‘that is going to be our main objective — to make sure we pick up more results, by not conceding goals, knowing that one goal can win us three points.’
two brilliant goals did that for United. the team showed some stubbornness yesterday and Mourinho will feel that it was long overdue.