UNITED TAKE HEAT OFF OLE
But pressure builds on Nuno as Spurs are put to sword
OLE GUNNAR SOLSKJAER has danced a dance throughout his time in charge at Old Trafford. Sometimes, it has seemed grim and desperate. Sometimes exultant. It is a dance that flirts with damnation and then rushes into the arms of salvation. And then it repeats. And repeats. And repeats. Somehow, even his greatest critics would have to admit, the Manchester United manager has mastered the knack of staying one step ahead of the Devil.
The pattern continues. After the humbling by Leicester City a few weeks ago and the savage criticism that followed, United conjured a dramatic comeback in the Champions League against Atalanta and Solskjaer was the saviour again. Then United were humiliated by Liverpool last week and most were agreed that Solskjaer was tottering once more on the edge.
But then the fates delivered Spurs to him in north London. ‘Lads,’ Sir Alex Ferguson once told his team before a match against them, ‘it’s Tottenham.’ That was all he needed to say. Roy Keane and the rest of the team knew what he meant: Spurs are flaky. Spurs are there to be beaten. Spurs will lose if the opposition want it badly enough. Not much has changed.
And so after all the pressure that was heaped on Solskjaer last week, his players rescued him against Spurs with a convincing 3-0 victory. In particular, Cristiano Ronaldo rescued him. He scored a brilliant first goal and made the second for Edinson Cavani and the match was won.
And so Solskjaer will be safe for a week. And the talk of Brendan Rodgers as a replacement will quieten. And the calls for Antonio Conte will dim. And hope will return that United’s goalscoring hero of the Nou Camp in 1999 can be the one to return the club to glory. And then United will play Manchester City at Old Trafford on Saturday and if the result goes the way the table suggests it will go, Solskjaer will be quickstepped back to the lip of the chasm again.
That is the most likely outcome.
United and Ronaldo are good enough to shine against a side like Spurs. But the evidence of this season so far suggests they are nowhere near good enough to succeed against the best teams. They are an ordinary team. City will be a very different test to Tottenham but it seems as if the United hierarchy have now become more fixated on keeping Solskjaer in a job than winning the title.
By the end of the match, in fact, the fact that Solskjaer had been under pressure before the game had almost been forgotten. It was the Spurs boss, Nuno Espirito Santo, who was feeling the heat by then. Spurs were desperately poor against United. Nuno was booed when he substituted Lucas Moura in the second half and he was booed again at the final whistle.
The tone for the quality of the first half was set in the first few seconds. The ball was played back to Raphael Varane from the kick off. Varane’s first touch was heavy and it put him under pressure as Harry Kane closed him down. Varane got the ball away just in time but only by hoofing it straight into touch.
Spurs came briefly to life midway through the half when Moura lifted a pass over the United defence into the path of Heung-Min Son. Son controlled it superbly with his first touch but when he tried to nudge it past David de Gea with his right foot, he was off balance and could only lift his effort over the bar.
Spurs thought they had scored when Eric Dier flicked on a corner and Cristian Romero bundled it in at the back post but it was disallowed for offside. At the other end, Fernandes chipped another clever cross into the box and Cavani, of all people, mistimed his header so that the ball flew harmlessly wide.
Hugo Lloris made a good save from a Fred piledriver and Aaron Wan-Bissaka made a good block from Son after Son had run on to a pass from Kane.
Six minutes before half-time, the ball was worked to Fernandes 10 yards outside the Spurs area. He looked up and saw Ronaldo peeling away from his marker, Ben Davies, and drilled a brilliant diagonal pass towards him.
Ronaldo could only have seen the ball very late but he had anticipated its flight. He met it on the volley with his right foot and directed it unerringly across Lloris and into the bottom right-hand corner.
United looked by far the more confident of the two teams and Nuno wasted little time in making a substitution. When it became evident that he had chosen to withdraw Lucas Moura, loud boos rang out around the stadium. Nuno’s honeymoon in north London is over and discontent is growing.
Things got worse for Nuno and his team midway through the half when Oliver Skipp lost the ball in the centre of midfield. Bruno played it to Ronaldo, who cut inside Skipp with an extravagant flick and left him floundering. Ronaldo looked up
and slid an inch-perfect pass into the path of Cavani, who took a touch and then lifted the ball delicately over the onrushing Lloris so that it rolled gently across the line.
Five minutes from time, United put the game out of reach when Nemanja Matic played fellow substitute Marcus Rashford in behind the Spurs defence and he sidefooted his shot past Lloris.
‘We want Levy out,’ the Tottenham fans sang as fate set its sights on a new victim.
TOTTENHAM (4-2-3-1): Lloris; Emerson, Dier, Davies, Romero; Skipp (Ndombele 66), Hojberg; Moura
(Bergwijn 54), Lo Celso (Alli 73), Son; Kane.
Subs (not used): Gollini, Doherty, Reguillon, Sanchez, Rodon, Tanganga. Booked: Davies, Romero.
MAN UTD (3-4-1-2): De Gea; Lindelof, Varane, Maguire; Wan-Bissaka, McTominay, Fred, Shaw; Fernandes
(Matic 76); Ronaldo (Rashford 71), Cavani (Lingard 82). Subs (not used): Henderson, Bailly, Greenwood, Dalot, Sancho, Van de Beek. Booked: Shaw, Maguire, Fred. Referee: Stuart Attwell. Attendance: 60,356.