F365 Says: Manchester United, a team devoid of direction
Jose Mourinho wanted a new central defender, and he didn’t get one. Had he got one, one of Victor Lindelof or Eric Bailly wouldn’t have started at Brighton. So Manchester United would have played better. Ergo, Manchester United have made things harder for Jose Mourinho.
In the Manchester United manager’s head it might well be that simple, and he undoubtedly has a point. Watching Bailly and Lindelof rashly dive into challenges and fail to track the penalty-box runs of one of the Premier League’s slowest strikers, it’s hard to recall United’s stance that only Raphael Varane would have been a significant upgrade on the club’s current options without bursting into laughter.
Manchester United are the biggest club in the world in terms of revenue. If any club has the ability to sign a player for the here and now, it is them. When Mourinho signed his new contract, he presumably did so confident that the club would match his own ambition. This summer, they haven’t.
But there ends the case for the defence after arguably the most shambolic Manchester United Premier League display since the departure of David Moyes. Under Mourinho there have been fair accusations of sluggish attacking play and stymied creativity, but his teams very rarely fall into abject disarray.
As goalkeeper put teammates under pressure with his distribution, central defenders over-committed themselves, full-backs got caught out of position and central midfielders proved themselves incapable of stemming the tide, Manchester United reminded of last season’s Arsenal. What few positives there were to glean were drowned by a sea of individual and systematic ineptitude.
If we can agree that Mourinho has been dealt a more difficult hand than he would like, he is still playing it appallingly. The deficiencies were masked against Leicester City, but Brighton actively bullied their opponents with a press that was far less intense than some United will face in the Premier League this season. After the first goal was scored, Chris Hughton told his players to push high and exploit the flaws in United’s defending. It took minutes to pay dividends.
And then there is the identity of the guiltiest parties. Lindelof and Bailly may not be Mourinho’s ideal defenders, but they are both his £30m signings. At what point do we expect the highest-paid football coach in the world to improve what he has a well as buying? Why did Manchester United look like they hadn’t trained together since a week last Friday? And whose fault if it if United’s players looked frightened of their own shadows and likely to be dispossessed by them too? Brighton looked well-coached, but their opponents?
Anthony Martial looked mostly miserable on the left wing, but has spent the summer trying to engineer a move away from this manager. Fred has been signed for £52m and lost possession too often in central midfield. David de Gea has had a poor 2018. Juan Mata and Andreas Pereira were the half-time sacrificial lambs, but it could have been any of their teammates that paid the price. Mourinho did not bother to even watch the final minute of the first half.
These are early days in the season, but they matter so much because they tend to set the tone for what follows. That is particularly true when the suspicion from outside Manchester United is that Mourinho may be organising an exit strategy and when the margins for error are likely to be smaller than ever before. In previous years, a damaging defeat could easily have been atoned for over the next fortnight. But 2018/19 is not the season to look like a team of individuals entirely without direction.
Before this game, top-six teams had played non-top-six teams in six matches so far in this campaign. The results: 3-1, 6-1, 4-0, 3-0, 2-1, 2-1. Even if big-game performance is to be Manchester United’s forte, they cannot afford to slip far behind their title rivals. The gap to Manchester City looks as wide as at any point last season.
As unpalatable as it might be for his supporters, it is fair to muse too on quite what Mourinho’s own forte now is. That famous siege mentality of his successful Chelsea and Inter teams is entirely absent at Manchester United. The defensive resilience those two great teams shared was not obvious at the Amex Stadium. The prolificacy of Real Madrid 2011/12 is several worlds away. We waited for the late onslaught against weaker opponent, but even that felt half-baked. After over two years, this is still an assortment of component parts without much of an identity.
At their worst, Manchester United are not a team of doers, but wait-and-seers that allow whole sections of matches to pass them by. The problem with waiting and seeing is that your opponents might just ignore your lofty status and reputation and play you on merit. Play Jose Mourinho’s team on merit, and there are precious few reasons for fear.
Daniel Storey
