TERRACE TALK: Manchester United: We didn’t deserve it but Daley delivers for lucky Luis
I was equally pained to note two other things that I’d actually got right. One was a prediction that we’d do no significant transfer window business. The other was this, previewing yesterday’s game: “our ever-shifting defence — be it a 3, 4 or 5 — can still expect plenty of the airborne and deadball action they have come to hate. As Louis would say: twitchy ass time.”
The first-half duly provided an object lesson in how to give a visiting defence a twitchy ass via the air and set-pieces, capped by West Ham’s corner-derived goal just after the break.
Watching a fourth-choice centre-back being able to take the time to play keepy-uppy, despite being surrounded by so-called defenders, before banging it home will not make my DVD of United highlights this season.
Colleagues spent most of the match groaning, and who could blame them?
“I’m not sure which causes me more despair: Valencia’s crossing or Di Maria’s corners.”
“What about our passing, our defending and our non-existent midfield, then?”
“Why isn’t Herrera on the pitch?”
“More to the point: why is Rooney on it?”
My old comrade James summed it up best: “We are the footballing equivalent of a Swiss army knife. We’ve got all the tools but we’re eff-all use in a battle.”
As we entered the final 10 minutes — having found ourselves in the bizarre position of being happy to see Fellaini come on, who at least knows how to scrap — my mind went back to Saturday. The last 10 minutes of the games I’d been fervently following had turned turtle on me: stirring FA Trophy minnows FC United were robbed by an 82nd minute winner in their quarter-final at Torquay, and then Man City escaped a Wastelands Hull humiliation with an injury-time equaliser.
I can’t pretend United deserved anything more than nul points for yesterday’s dismal effort. But Daley Blind’s strike duly arrived like a thunderbolt and the Red weekend was saved from total washout.
I will spare you the reviews by my aforementioned colleagues of United’s performance, chiefly because they contain so many swear words all we’d be left with would be a paragraph of asterisks. Which is in itself a metaphor for United’s play at the moment: possessing mere space and producing nothing watchable in it. Di Maria and Falcao were especially worrying: Falcao fluffed his big lines yet again, whilst the former’s head appears elsewhere, after the reported burglary attempt at his house.
As for the issue of Rooney in midfield, we’ve dealt with that here before. LVG had reiterated last week that he is more adamant about his rectitude on this than ever, whereas most of the rest of us would select another word beginning with rect- and thereby invite Louis where to shove the idea.
It’s funny how Van Gaal reveals himself to be more like Fergie every day, as befitting the Continuity Candidate: stubborn refusals to change unpopular selection or tactic ideas; now picking fights with refs, the FA and agents; tinkering from week to week and persisting in mis-positioning players; belligerent arrogance when challenged; and being lucky.
Ah, there’s the rub — as Blind’s moment demonstrated yet again, Louis still seems to possess the most important Fergie facet of all.
Burnley arrive tomorrow before we go to Preston for an FA Cup tie that promises a night of angst in a hostile environment. Not as hostile as Old Trafford will become if Louis doesn’t pull his philosophical finger out soon.
