Armstrong pounces but Saints squander early lead
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.
As for Hughes himself, he pondered: ‘When you look at our display and the table, we are not where we want to be. Are we under-performing compared to last year? Probably not.
‘Everybody saw by the manner of our display that we are a good side, we just have to keep performing.’
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 Saints when they’d brought the scores level at half-time was an indictment of quite how feeble they’ve become. United are now 16 points behind Manchester City at the top of the table, closer to the bottom than the top.
The game was a study in chaos from the start. 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 byeline but backheeled it when a precise pass would’ve 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.
‘It doesn’t matter the system we play,’ said Mourinho. ‘(Not winning) has to do with the characteristics of the players.
‘With all due respect, we don’t have many mad dogs that bite the ball and press all the time. We don’t have many people with that spirit.
‘That’s the people who are aggressive on the ball, fight hard to recover the ball. It’s about that appetite, that fire that you have, you need that to recover the ball faster, and higher on the pitch.’
Frustrated in his attempts to sign another centre-back 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 fit enough to start. The result was that 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 looked terrified of the pace of debutant attacker Michael 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 in 13 minutes. Redmond dribbled around a series of half-hearted United challenges and found Obafemi. He fed Stuart Armstrong, who drilled a blistering shot across David de Gea into the corner.
The Scotland international’s strike lifted St Mary’s and gave under pressure Hughes some valuable breathing space.
Seven minutes later, Saints went further ahead. Mario Lemina was brought down by Rashford on the edge of the area.
Cedric Soares took it and curled a perfect free-kick over the wall and beyond the dive of De Gea.
Hughes’ faith in youth was paying off. Maybe this was the start of a brave new world. That dream lasted eight minutes. Rashford suddenly burst into life. He rode his luck to control a through ball from Pogba and squared to Lukaku, who lashed his shot past McCarthy.
Six minutes later, United equalised as Rashford pulled 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.
But United were abject in the second half and settled for a point.