Johnny Nicholson on the Premier League: Will Ronaldo really make the difference for Man United?

Fans of Manchester United hold up a cardboard cutout of New Signing Cristiano Ronaldo during the Premier League match against Wolverhampton Wanderers. Picture: Shaun Botterill/Getty Images

Frustration for all at Molineux

Before Sunday’s game Wolves had had more shots on goal than anyone except Liverpool — 42 — but hadn’t scored. They still haven’t. They overran Manchester United time and again but could make little of the advantages they had carved. Shots are short of accuracy, final balls go astray, passes are overhit. But if it’s obvious where they need to strengthen, it is equally so for their opponents. United’s glaring need for a defensive midfielder is obvious. Jadon Sancho had an awful game and seemed adrift, partly the victim of the defensive midfield dysfunction and the disconnection it causes.

If Wolves had a ruthless striker they would’ve won Sunday’s game easily. They won most of the second balls and in the full-steam-ahead racing car that is Adama Traoré they have the best get-out ball in the league, sad then that he’s some flavour of useless in front of goal. He’s played over 100 games but scored just seven in the league.

He’s missed three one-on-ones this season. Mason Greenwood, on the other hand, can be ruthless and his goal saved United’s blushes after a frustrating game, helping them to a record-breaking Premier League run of unbeaten away games. Even so, there is something wrong with them.

They don’t seem set up right at all and it’s a problem that Cristiano Ronaldo’s arrival will surely not solve.

Speaking of which...

The missing man

As the Red Devils played Wolverhampton Wanderers, the focus of everyone’s attention was on the man who was not there: Cristiano Ronaldo. And that is a potential problem.

Of course everyone posts their welcome messages to him, of course no-one will say they’re anything other than they’re delighted to see him and his oversized neck arrive in the dressing room, but that simply can’t be the case.

Mason Greenwood, scorer of the winner, must now be wondering what the next couple of years holds. Will he be consigned to playing in the cup games or in the easy league games while Big Boy rests? Why should he? Will other noses be put out of joint? No-one likes to have to play second fiddle, no matter how great the new arrival is. Some may like the fact that he will soak up all the limelight, it may take pressure off them, but then again, others may feel they are in his shadow. Either way, the last thing United needed was another striker.

How Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Ronaldo handle the politics of the situation may heavily gear how successful the transfer is. Will he just score goals that someone else would have scored anyway, or will he be a real difference-maker?

Abject Arsenal

It was the manner of the defeat which informed most. At one point late in the second half they had 18% possession, finished on 20%, had just one shot, and committed just seven fouls, despite having a player sent off.

That is a team who has not turned up and proof that beating some lower league reserves 6-0 in the League Cup does not inject confidence into a club, so let’s hear no more of such simplistic garbage. The third goal was especially appalling as they were thoroughly filleted by a pass from City’s keeper through central midfield.

Defensively redundant, they were passed through, crossed over, ran past,, and passed around.

Arsenal’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang appears dejected during the Premier League match at the Etihad Stadium. Picture: Nick Potts/PA 

That Granit Xhaka got a red card for a two-footed off-the-ground tackle on a player in the left of midfield who was no danger, said it all about their quality. If you’re going to kung-fu someone, at least try and stop a goal when you do it.

Time and again, they were mere observers of the game, not participants. City held the ball for three and four minutes at a time. In the end they could’ve lost by nine. Shocking. And even more shocking is that it wasn’t shocking at all.

The end for aimless Arteta

Mikel Arteta certainly is a record-breaker. It’s the first time Arsenal have lost the opening three games since the 1954-55 season. The first time ever that Arsenal have lost their opening three league games without scoring. The first time they’ve been bottom of the league since 1974.

How will this get any better? Pep Guardiola tried talking him up, post-game, but it didn’t convince. It’s not just the results, it’s the nature of the performances. Does he even coach defence? You can blame the players, you can blame the board, you can blame Kroenke and all must take some share of responsibility, but changing any of those is difficult, takes time, money and may not even be achievable.

By contrast, sacking the manager is the easiest way to try and change things. And it needs to change. The team’s attitude stinks, some players’ commitment is questionable, their work ethic absent, their tactics woeful. All are evidence of a poor managerial performance by someone who has obviously been over-promoted.

There are endemic problems at Arsenal that one sacking will not fix, but if the club keeps this hapless manager, then what does that say? It says poor is good enough.

Hands up for handball

Reece James’ sending off was a controversial decision which took forever to sort out via VAR, but a correct one. Thomas Tuchel later admitted to not knowing what the current iteration of the handball law says and he’s not alone in that. However, in such a situation, whether it was a deliberate handball or not, if it comes off your thigh then hits your hand and the hand keeps it out of the net, then it has to be a penalty.

Players keeping the ball out of the net with their hand can’t and shouldn’t be allowed. The law should be unequivocal and not open to various interpretations. That James himself seemed so shocked by the decision — repeatedly shouting a rhetorical “what!?” at the red card — showed once again that some players don’t know the laws of the game, that or he’s just being hysterical to obfuscate his own culpability.

However, what does seem unfair is the double jeopardy of a red card and a penalty. No other infringement on the pitch is quite so double-barrelled. There should be a law change to make the choice Liverpool’s to make. A red card or a penalty, but not both. That’s 100% too much punishment for one transgression.

Various vile VAR verdicts

Fans of VAR, of which there must be literally some, found little to support their faith in the system. It took over five minutes to make a decision for a penalty for Norwich, eventually ruled out a Norwich goal for offside, when the player arguably wasn’t interfering with play, didn’t rule against a clear foul before the Manchester United goal, couldn’t even make a handball decision at Anfield, so passed it back to the referee who made the exact same subjective decision that he would have if there was no VAR.

Even when it is used correctly, such as for the Southampton penalty at St James’ Park, it was a decision that most referees would’ve called correctly in the moment anyway, without need to hang around for a few minutes while someone in some sordid little grief hole rolls the videotape back and forth and checks what was bloody obvious anyway.

Norwich City fans react as referee Robert Jones checks the pitch side VAR monitor during the Premier League match at Carrow Road. Picture: Joe Giddens/PA 

Fans are loving being back in the grounds watching football and are putting up with the much-loathed system at the moment, but when the cold winter months come and there is more obvious jeopardy on the decisions, such protracted farces will not go down well.

It’s all so unnecessary and frankly pathetic.

Battered Bruce battles on

You worry about Steve Bruce on the touchline with his chip shop owner’s physique and ruddy-face complexion. He looks like an advert for the dangers of high blood pressure. Managing Newcastle United just cannot be worth the misery it induces in any human. The first half against Southampton was just an awful 45 minutes, the second was better football, but with added torture.

He wears his despair so nakedly on his lived-in face and to hear him speak in his soft voice after the game is to hear the voice of weary frustration and depression. It would surely be a nicer, happier life for him to walk away from Newcastle and do something less stressful, such as bomb disposal.

At times he looks like an abused animal in a zoo peering out mournfully from behind the bars of his prison as the public jeer “Bruce Out!” at him. He’s already a multi-millionaire, he doesn’t need the money. A last-minute penalty goal on Saturday, as he was once again on the wrong end of a VAR decision, was just the latest kick in the teeth. What on earth keeps him coming back for more?

Antonio the goal ace

West Ham United’s Michail Antonio set up his team’s first goal with a penetrating, high-speed run and scored their second with what is technically known as a right bloody netbuster. Now 31, as a striker, he finally seems to have found his best, most effective position on the pitch, after playing as a full back, midfielder, and winger during his career.

West Ham United's Michail Antonio (centre) celebrates with his team-mates after scoring

The long ball to a fast, strong striker who bullies the defender out of the way to batter the ball home, is one of football’s greatest traditions. A tradition too often lost in the desire for ever greater sophistication and in the genuflecting at the altar of the holy holy passing. However, there are few better sights in the game.

To see Antonio racing onto a through ball really stirs the blood, but what makes him a great striker is that he has learned how to marry intelligent movement and positional play with his extraordinary physical assets. After being on the outskirts of the England squad a few years ago and latterly qualifying for Jamaica, this sort of form should not keep him from some sort of international career, as acknowledgment for his late but welcome progress.

Norwich: The quiet subversives 

The Canaries have had three promotions and three relegations in the last eight seasons and the early signs suggest it is almost inevitable that they will make it four this season. Despite spending £54m on nine players, these look more like investments for profit from future sales than a massive boost to the quality of the first team. And that’s fine. No-one should be stressed unduly if they finish bottom, collect their £100m from the Premier League and £40m more in parachute payments and happily leave the league again, pockets bulging.

Rather be a yo-yo club than the tedious and largely pointless efforts at clinging on to Premier League status. It means the club is financially strong — no mean feat these days — and it means pretty much every other season is absolutely brilliant entertainment. It is not said enough that football is about fun, about community, about just being there, far far, more than it is about top-flight status.

To not take the Premier League too seriously, and to go up only to come back down immediately, is quietly very subversive. They should be applauded.

Tottenham topping the table 

The power of three takes Spurs to the top of the table into the international break. Three games played, three goals scored, no goals conceded, nine points collected. That they stand atop the listings as Arsenal languish hopelessly at the bottom will make the fact all the sweeter for the Lillywhites and their fans.

Equally, it is a bitter pill for the other half of North London to have to swallow. Tottenham have set a standard for themselves that they may struggle to maintain; however, the memory of being top and their greatest rivals being bottom will provide a warm glow well into the cold winter months.

There were question marks over the appointment of Nuno Espírito Santo, perhaps especially because of the protracted recruitment process, but he has gone about organising the club with a quiet efficiency. They are defensively more coherent and less flakey and whatever he’s put into Dele Alli’s tea seems to have revived a career that was drifting towards the exit door.

The tedious Harry Kane saga has had a positive effect in that it has taken the focus off both Nuno and off the rest of the team too while they all settle into the new regime. It couldn’t have gone better.