On Saturday 25th September Manchester United dropped three points at Old Trafford to Aston Villa in yet another disappointing loss. Here are five things that we learnt.
We can’t seem to get the job done
This marks a third loss in four games across all competitions for Manchester United. That is something that just isn’t good enough. Across the last two games, the Red Devils have had over 50 shots but come away with 0 goals. This tells us what we need to know, that we aren’t working through the phases well enough to create good goal-scoring chances.
Set-piece question marks still remain
After hiring a new set-piece coach in Eric Ramsey, it is fair to say that we have looked threatening from attacking set-pieces. Granted, we are yet to score from one but there have been some good signs that things are heading in the right direction. Defensively, however, we look all over the place. Conceding from a set-piece is never good, most of the time it just comes down to poor defending, or a poor defensive set-up. We saw that yet again against Villa, conceding yet again from a corner. This is worrying because this is exactly how teams who don’t have as much quality on the ball will try and punish us.
Injury worries
On Saturday afternoon United were hit with injury worries for two of our starting defenders. Harry Maguire and Luke Shaw both picked up knocks and become doubts for upcoming fixtures. This has to be a major worry for Ole Gunnar Solkjsær. We saw in the League Cup game that Alex Telles isn’t necessarily ready to step up to being a first choice left-back for Manchester United. At centre-back we’ve got Lindelöf who isn’t by any stretch a bad defender. But I think we can all agree that he is a big step down from Maguire. Hopefully neither of these two are serious, long-term injuries and both can return to the starting XI soon.
Sloppiness
Against Aston Villa we saw a problem that Manchester United fans will not be unfamiliar with. Misplaced passes. Throughout the team we saw players have a pass completion rate of around 70-75%. This came from the likes of Raphael Varane, Paul Pogba, Fred and McTominay. These are players who should be keeping hold of the ball, making passes. This allows the game to tick over and for the team to work through the phases to create good goal-scoring chances further down the field.
More Pressure on Ole
I don’t think this comes as a surprise to anyone to say that the manager of Manchester United is under pressure to deliver results. But when you start a season with going out of the League Cup in the team’s first match and losing the first group game of the Champions League. There is definitely an extra bit of pressure. Combine that with the pressure from both mainstream and social media and the pressure is definitely on Ole Gunnar Solskjær the next time he leads the Red Devils out onto the pitch.