MORE DRAMA FOR JOSE
United’s draw
FIVE minutes before kick-off, the lights went down at St Mary’s, drums began to beat, flames leapt into the air and the crowd began to yell. It felt less like the build-up to a football match and more like the preamble to a pagan sacrifice.
By the end of a match that was a dramatic exercise in incompetence between two mediocre teams, it was anybody’s guess whether Southampton boss Mark Hughes or Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho would find himself strapped to the altar first.
It has been reported that Southampton, who have not won a match since September 1, have been talking to Paulo Sousa about taking over from Hughes. Maybe United should start talking to Sousa, too because, under Mourinho, they are going nowhere fast.
That United came back from 2-0 down in this helter- skelter of a match does them credit. That they found themselves in that position in the first place against a team deep in relegation trouble provides a savage commentary on the limp mess of a side they have become.
And that they failed to finish off a side as fragile as Southampton when they had brought the scores equal before half- time was an indictment of quite how feeble they have become. United are now 16 points behind Manchester City at the top of the table, closer to the bottom than the top.
Whether Hughes survives the weekend is open to question. The suggestion was that unless Southampton won, his eight months at St Mary’s would be brought to an end. In his favour, his side showed great hunger against the odds and his bold decision to give league debuts to Michael Obafemi and Yan Valery nearly paid off.
As for Mourinho, well, he staggers o n , mir e d in bitterness and resentment and the ordinariness of mid- t a bl e . Ten days a go, he predicted that United would mount a charge towards the top four. They have responded by drawing with Crystal Palace and Southampton.
‘ We want to be smelling those positions,’ Mourinho said of the Champions League spots. They might be nine points shy of them by this evening and the only thing smelling at the moment is his management. Sadly for United’s magnificent travelling support, it is stinking the place out.
His latest odd selection decision was t he omission of Anthony Martial, who has been in such fine form recently. Martial has been one of the few players providing a glimmer of hope among the gloom of United’s recent performances, but he was left on the bench.
Both managers had been bemoaning their lot in the build-up. Hughes’ programme notes catalogued the run of bad luck he believes his team has suffered. The page was a tale of woes, of good starts and positive possession statistics, ruined by poor refereeing decisions and near misses.
‘The margins are fine,’ Hughes wrote. ‘But we can’t keep saying that. We have to come up with answers. Now we have the opportunity to get points on the board and put right some of the wrongs from recent matches.’
The game was a study in chaos from the opening exchanges. Only two minutes had gone when Southampton passed the ball back to Alex McCarthy, who missed his kick completely as he tried to clear it. Marcus Rashford collected the ball on the byline but backheeled it when a precise pass would have found Ander Herrera and given him a tap in.
The backheel did not work but the ball squirted to Romelu Lukaku instead. He took a touch to control it, which was long enough to allow McCarthy to smother his shot. The ball bounced clear. Southampton made a hash of clearing it. United could not capitalise and eventually the ball was hacked away.
United’s defence looked similarly terrified. Mourinho’s team selection looked like yet another message to the United board about how short of defenders he is. Frustrated in his attempts to sign another centreback in the summer, Mourinho has not let up in his efforts to right the wrong since.
To be fair to the United board, it is hard to anticipate a situation where Chris Smalling, Eric Bailly and Victor Lindelof are all out injured and Marcos Rojo is not yet fit enough to start. The result was t hat holding midfielder Scott McTominay started alongside Phil Jones in the heart of defence.
Mourinho has tried that before and it has failed before. This time, McTominay and Jones l ooked terrified of the pace of debutant attacker Obafemi and his foil, Nathan Redmond. Nor were they helped by Paul Pogba’s willingness to give the ball away.
It was clear to everyone that it was going to be a high- scoring game and the first goal came after 13 minutes. Redmond dribbled around a series of half- hearted United challenges and found Obafemi. He bamboozled a couple of defenders, too, and spread the ball wide to Stuart Armstrong, who drilled a blistering shot across David De Gea and into the corner. Hughes saw a glimpse of salvation.
Seven minutes later, Southampton went further ahead. Mario Lemina was brought down by Rashford on the edge of the area, which earned the United forward a yellow card. Cedric Soares took it and curled a
perfect free-kick over the wall and beyond the dive of De Gea.
St Mary’s has been starved of anything as dramatic as this all season and, in those heady minutes, it felt as if they were turning a corner. Hughes’ faith in youth was paying off. Maybe this was the start of a brave new world and a move up the table. That dream lasted for eight minutes.
Rashford had had a miserable half an hour but suddenly he burst into life. He rode his luck to control a through- ball from Pogba and squared the ball to Lukaku, who had been ignored by Southampton’s defence. Lukaku took his time and lashed his shot past McCarthy.
Lukaku’s strike ended a run of 12 games and 981 minutes without a goal for United in all competitions since scoring against Watford in September.
Six minutes later, United equalised, Rashford dribbling to the byline and pulling the ball back to Herrera. The cross was slightly behind the Spaniard but he flicked it goalwards and it nestled in the corner of the net.
Marouane Fellaini missed a chance to put United ahead when he directed a free header wide from Ashley Young’s free-kick five minutes after the interval, but it was a moment of carelessness from Pogba with 10 minutes to go that nearly led to Southampton re-taking the lead.
Pogba dallied on t he ball in midfield, then seemed to fall over it, passing it straight to Redmond, who took a couple of steps and unleashed a shot from 35 yards that De Gea had to push over the bar.
There was still time for a moment of comedy. A shot from Redmond was blocked and Lukaku chased it down. He tried to control it but trod on it instead and fell over in a heap. Play had to be stopped while he received treatment. If you could pick one image to sum this game up, that was as good as any.