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Morning.
Like many of you, I’m sure, I watched Manchester United last night. They are our next opponents in the Premier League, our penultimate game of the season, and they were in action against Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park.
Perhaps that’s the wrong way put it. Crystal Palace were in action, I don’t really know what United were, other than very, very bad. This is one of those where you don’t want to tempt fate, but talking about how poor they were last night isn’t that. I fully expect them to be better on Sunday, because that would be just typical. The randomness of football and variance in performance is something we’ll have to deal with.
However, their display against Palace was abysmal. Defensively they are a shambles, and Palace exploited that to great effect. Sure, the United back four was makeshift, but even so, they looked disorganised, and just couldn’t live with opposition players who played with real purpose. Obviously, I’m hoping this is a demoralising defeat, not one which sees them rally and respond for their final game of the season.
Once again, Man Utd conceded 16 shots or more in a Premier League game. I think that’s 20 times this season? I could be wrong, but it’s a lot, and it’s really all on the manager. I saw a story last week about how Jim Ratcliffe, the new owner, was complaining about the training ground being a mess, so much so that he threatened to cancel any Christmas parties (I know, it didn’t make a lot of sense to me in early May either). But if he’s annoyed about dirty socks and grubby showers, what must he think about what a mess United are on the pitch too?
Obviously I have zero inside info about that club, but I would be astonished if Erik ten Hag wasn’t sacked at the end of the season. He has got them to an FA Cup final, of course, and perhaps winning that game might save his bacon, but that looked to me like the kind of performance that comes as a result of the manager losing the dressing room….
Source link : https://arseblog.com/2024/05/palace-batter-united-havertz-the-perfect-player-for-mikel-arteta/
Author : arseblog
Publish date : 2024-05-07 06:29:06
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