The Rangnick era is so far defined by Manchester United playing poorly but not losing

Manchester United's manager Ralf Rangnick celebrates. Picture: AP Photo/Dave Thompson

Another VAR farce #1

VAR intervened to spoil an entertaining game at Selhurst Park, as Crystal Palace attempted to equalise after being steamrolled by Liverpool for half an hour, then outplaying them for much of the second half. With the clock ticking down, Diogo Jota collided with goalkeeper Vicente Guaita. After a protracted wait the VAR couldn’t sort it out so handed it back to Kevin Friend who peered at the screen and gave the penalty. How couldn’t Mr Magoo see that Jota jumped to one side to collide into the goalie and that it quite obviously wasn’t a penalty? It’s one thing to make a mistake in real time. Quite another to take three minutes, see it over and over again, and still get it wrong.

Palace were rightly aggrieved with being denied the chance of a last-gasp equaliser. VAR should be offered a long walk on a short plank but no-one in charge wants to lose face by doing that, preferring to humiliate themselves, their fellow officials and their rancid system every week instead. Later they issued an explanation as to why it was given.

It was fundamentally wrong.

Another VAR farce #2

When Harry Kane scored against Chelsea, it was ruled out for a push on Thiago Silva. But the amount of contact was minimal and not enough to knock Silva over. The referee ruled out the goal and VAR kept its mouth shut when it should have given it. Of course they copped out with the ‘not a clear and obvious error’ excuse.

So to recap, VAR was set up to iron out referring mistakes, but it doesn’t if it isn’t clear and obvious even if it actually is a mistake and even if they can see it is a mistake.

Brighton notch 12th draw

When Danny Welback netted with an excellent towering header in the 82nd minute to draw Brighton level with Leicester City it was the eighth time they had scored after the 80th minute. In so many ways it was a typical Brighton performance. Lots of lovely passing through the first two thirds and yet not a lot of goal threat. Only Manchester City, Chelsea and Liverpool have lost less games than the Seagulls, who have now recorded 12 draws.

Basically, they are one superb striker away from the big time. But can they buy that superb striker and who would it be?

Manchester United puzzle

The Ralf Rangnick era is so far defined by Manchester United playing poorly but not losing. And their game against West Ham United was yet another example. It should’ve ended a scoreless draw but for Marcus Rashford’s last-minute goal.

Much of the time, watching United is like watching someone driving a powerful car in first gear. There is an awful lot of revving and noise but very little progress. Their form is puzzling, so puzzling that no-one can really work it out and so the players are being blamed for being lazy or unmotivated, or not liking their new manager’s ways. Even so, they’re still in the top four, so how bad is it really?

Canaries rise like a phoenix

Friday night saw Norwich rise phoenix-like out of the bottom three with an impressive second-half display against Watford and their surely soon-to-be-sacked manager Claudio Ranieri. Their 3-0 win meant Norwich had scored 23.07% of all the goals they have registered this season, in one game. That’s two straight wins for the Canaries. 

However they have played four, yes four, games more than Burnley and two more than Watford and Newcastle, so they are a long way from survival yet.

Can’t rule by fear anymore

Big scary Duncan Ferguson received much support from the football community in his role as caretaker manager of Everton this week. With every hour that passed before the Toffees game against Aston Villa, Ferguson got better and better as a manager, with some pundits suggesting he’d scare them into playing well.

Then the game started and it turned out you need much more than someone shouting at you in order to win a game of football.

You can’t rule by fear. Having a good youth player like Antony Gordon is ultimately far, far more important than some notional ‘death stare.’

Bottled it

There’s a trend to throw bottles at players at the moment. Idiotic football fans need little encouragement to behave terribly and it seems they’ve all got a memo that you can throw a full bottle into a player’s face with impunity. It happened at Goodison Park.

It isn’t easy to prevent, but it is easy to identify and arrest the perpetrators and it shouldn’t take too many of these knuckleheads to be marched out of the ground to put others off copying such behaviour.

Drone strike

Play at Brentford was suspended for nearly 20 minutes due to a drone being spotted hovering over the ground. It was speculated this was for public safety, in case it fell out of the sky, but in truth play was almost certainly suspended because it risked contravening Premier League broadcast rights.

It already has drone laws on the books. If they don’t stop drones, there’ll be several over every ground, streaming the play. And we know they protect broadcast rights more fiercely than anything else because they are the motherlode of their wealth. Look at how quickly they get any unofficial social media posts of a few seconds from a game taken down.

Stevie G for great

Seeing Steven Gerrard walking off the pitch to jeers from Everton fans and him telling them to eff off, but with a smile on his face, was brilliant. The Villa boss is hugely impressive and I’d be surprised if he doesn’t evolve into a really dominant manager in English football. Klopp leaves Liverpool in 2024. Two years isn’t long, but, we all know, Gerrard is next in line. And you know what? I fancy him to take them to massive success. He’s got…it.

Warm-weather training with added grovelling

Newcastle are off to Saudi this week for warm-weather training and a friendly against Al Ittihad FC. Anyone wonder why they chose that location? Eddie Howe called it ‘a football decision’ a comment so obviously such a distance from the truth that it made him look small.

He’s got to be careful, firstly to say the right things in Saudi or he may not come home, secondly, that he doesn’t make himself look like the lackey of an awful regime and is at their beck and call. Which he does. This is sportswashing at work.

Tottenham Spurs it up

They had the chance to move up into the top four but Spurs fell at the Chelsea hurdle, losing to them once again. They’ve lost all four games against them this season, three this month, by an aggregate of 8-0. If they win the games in hand, they could still make the top four, but there is always a doubt with the north London side. It seems to be in the club DNA to mess things up.

They have zero depth in quality, Antonio Conte will use this loss as proof they need reinforcements and a lot of them before the end of the transfer window.