Giggs can’t halt United slide

Manchester United 0 Sunderland 1

For the seventh time in the league this season — the same total of home league defeats that Alex Ferguson amassed in his final four seasons in charge of the club combined — United were beaten before their own supporters.

Given the apparently imminent arrival of Dutch national team manager Louis van Gaal, who may be appointed United manager as soon as Wednesday according to reports, it was a curiously lacklustre display from which nobody emerged with any credit.