Last night we saw a pathetic display from Manchester United in a 1-0 loss at home to Wolverhampton Wanderers. Here are five things that we learnt.
Do the players even care?
This is something that has been bothering people for a few weeks lately. There have been times in these embarrassing performances where some players don’t even look like they care. They don’t care about their poor performances. Last night didn’t seem any different. Too many times players were complaining to each other or the referee. They needed to take responsibility for their shambolic performance. Players all over the pitch were getting the basics wrong. Misplacing simple passes was commonplace. Players out of position being ran rings around by the Wolves players. This was simply not good enough from anyone. The players need to sharpen up if they are going to continue playing for this club.
Midfield Mess
The way that we were set up last night with this 4-2-2-2 formation just didn’t seem to be working. We were absolutely toothless in midfield. There was no desire to retain the ball. There was no energy or pressing or anything. We just looked awful. Those two in midfield looked so poor. Especially when you consider how they looked last week against Burnley. I left that game thinking that we might have found a midfield partnership that works. But last night the two of them got dominated by the Wolves team. I was genuinely embarrassed to have watched that.
No creativity
There was a period of maybe five or ten minutes when Bruno came on and he looked alright. He looked lively and was playing a few decent balls in. But other than that when we did have the ball we did absolutely nothing with it. We could barely string a pass together let alone create a chance. Sancho looked really off his game. And then Mason Greenwood who actually looked not too bad but was then taken off too early in my opinion. And when Rashford came on he didn’t really do all that much either. What is the point in having two of the best and most clinical strikers going if we cannot get the ball to them and give them good chances.
Phil Jones
With both Harry Maguire and Victor Lindelöf injured, Rangnick called on Phil Jones. Last night he made his first appearance for the first team in two years. And he looked alright. It’s a shame that his clearance didn’t go far enough and no one else closed Moutinho down. Because other than that he put in a pretty solid performance. Of course we were all expecting something to go wrong. When a player hasn’t featured for that long there is always that risk that when they come back it goes horribly wrong. It says something about the rest of the players on the pitch that Phil Jones was one of United’s best players.
Top four over?
I think most United fans accepted a while ago that the best we were going to get from this season was a top four finish. But now even that looks unlikely. If we keep putting in performances like that then there really is no chance that we can finish in the top four. We came into this run of games thinking that we could pick up some points and begin to get things back on track for the rest of the season. But dropping points in these seemingly winnable games is not good enough. And if we are to even think about finishing in the top four, we have to start seeing major changes. Whether those are changes to the players on the pitch, to the formation and tactics or a combination of the lot remains to be seen.