Manchester United – two negatives do make a positive

Article by @harbottle_mark

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Our season was up and running for just less than a week before 30 minutes of chaos erupted against Leicester and the world was left stunned as Manchester United simply imploded. It was glaringly obvious that our defensive unit were simply battered by the newly promoted side, and the media have had a field day. What’s left to do but look at the positives?

Sticking a brand new Ferrari engine into an old Corsa and expecting it to win the Grand Prix is a fairly unreliable strategy. The spine of our team is missing a vital vertebrae somewhere between goalkeeper and central midfield but whilst this fact is unavoidable, Manchester United are the only squad in the league scoring goals for fun. When we are on form we are sublime. Four stunners against QPR (yes it was only QPR) and three beautiful goals against Leicester is enough to say that this is a team who can score against anyone, anywhere, anytime. I doubt that the ongoing strategy will be simply ‘to score more than you concede’, but Louis van Gaal could probably get away with pulling 4 names out of a hat and telling them to get up front and have a laugh.

We have to give a little credit to an accumulation of new manager, defender(s), midfielder and two forwards all in the space of a few months. The current defending champions and league favourites (City and Chelsea respectively) revolutionised their teams through heavy investment and constant change, it took years to really solidify as a well-oiled machine. The expectation is greater at Manchester United because of our history and reputation. Of course LvG is building his squad, but we know it’s not going to happen overnight. As a bias fan is it too much to ask that we take this loss on the chin and give the guy a break?

If anyone can put their hand on their hearts and say they thought our defensive back line would slot into place and complement the goal scoring desire of our forwards then they are simply lying to themselves. If I had to choose to get turned over by someone, it would probably be the teams less likely to challenge for the title. I’d rather get it wrong early, spot the mistakes and rectify them before we rock up at the Etihad thinking everything is hunkey-dorey and we’re going to sail up the league. We’ve got about 5 weeks until we face anyone who finished in the top 4 last season (Chelsea at home) so I’d rather spent this time patching up holes than creating new ones. All of this is assuming we don’t let ourselves down before the end of October.

Not enough defenders and too many forwards were ultimately the reason that United lost the game on Sunday. I’m happy to admit that we were outclassed by a side that simply worked harder, dug deeper and pushed the right buttons. There needs to be some more determination in the team to see out such an exquisite start to a match like that.

Looking forward, I’m not expecting it to get any easier any time soon. There will be hiccups along the way and it’s difficult to see how we will compete for fourth spot. It’s a long season and it sounds like the right noises are being made internally as the club looks to tighten up the defence before the January transfer window. At least we only have a defence to worry about; this time last year the whole starting 11 were to blame.

Fergie said “attack wins you games, defence wins you titles” and I think Sunday was the ultimate tribute to that statement.

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