On 11th December Manchester United took 3 points in what was a pretty lackluster performance against Norwich. Here are five things that we learnt.
Sloppy in possession
Manchester United looked really sloppy and lethargic in possession against Norwich. When we had the ball that is. United only had 52.8% possession. And whilst you obviously don’t win a game just by having more possession it certainly helps. There just wasn’t any period of the game where it felt like United were in any way in control. There were countless misplaced passes, from everyone to be honest. Some of the main offenders being the likes of Bruno and Marcus. But also Alex Telles misplaced a fair few passes. And it just wasn’t good enough. We need to see United taking a hold of these kinds of games and really controlling them from the off.
Lack of Pressing
The team’s pressing seemed really off and pretty poor throughout most of the game. There were multiple times where we would just sit back and let Norwich have the ball for long periods of time. And with Rangnick coming in, we’ve heard so much about the press and the counter-press. Now, obviously, no one was expecting a complete change around in just over a week. But it is strange that the players can look so off the mark, when last week against Crystal Palace there were long stretches of the game where we did look really sharp. I don’t know if this was a case of players reverting to habitt, or something else. But whatever it was needs to change. This was something that Rangnick touched on slightly in his post-match comments, in saying that he needed more physicality from certain players.
Rashford off the pace
Marcus Rashford has had question marks over his performances over the past few weeks. This match was unfortunately no different. His game just looked a bit weak. He was misplacing passes quite often. The one that sticks out immediately being the cut back to Ronaldo that was behind him. I think most of us thought it was strange to bring Greenwood on for Sancho rather than Rashford. When in fact, I think most would agree that Sancho was one of our best outlets in the game and was actually looking pretty sharp. Now, we all love Marcus Rashford and want him to get back to playing his best football. But, I’m not sure if playing him through a bad patch is necessarily the way to go with that. I think Ralf will have a decision to make come the Brentford game on Tuesday.
Clean Sheet
Keeping clean sheets and tightening up the defense were things that Rangnick spoke quite a lot about when he came in to the job. However, the clean sheet in this game was not really courtesy of the back four. David de Gea had an outstanding performance. He made multiple big saves and actually commanded his box quite well. The one save that stands out was the one that stopped Ozan Kabak’s header from finding the back of the net. If we can continue keeping clean sheets then we stand a much better chance of picking up points.
Much needed 3 points
We can all complain about what a poor performance that was but at the end of the day a win is still a win. Of course Ronaldo was the one to score for us. Who else would it have been. We won 1-0 and we move on. I think that has to be how we look at the this favourable run of fixtures that we’ve got. Obviously good performances will be nice and it would be great to see how Ralf is improving this team. But the most important thing has to be picking up as many points as possible. The league table is looking extraordinarily tight from 4th down to maybe 7th or 8th. And if we want to salvage anything in the league this season we need to pick up points. It really is as simple as that.