This is going to be a long season, and almost certainly will not be as successful as last year, which was always going to be difficult to beat, but there’s signs of regression already. Last season, when we failed to win, we generally kept it tight and created a lot of chances, but happened to have a genuinely remarkable season in terms of poor conversion.
Today was quite enlightening. Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher are going to rip this apart, because an armchair amateur like me can see what was going wrong. Huddersfield were so narrow at times that when we were on the edge of their box, all of their players bar one or two were within a 10m circle. Whoever had the ball was surrounded, but there was an awful lot of space out wide or even just away from the ball. Taking Mata off was a big error here, because he has the technical ability to thrive in these tight spaces and and move the ball into the danger areas quickly.
Huddeersfield could defend narrow as we had nothing to offer wide. Rashford was a second centre forward, so Young had the left flank alone, but wanted to cut inside onto his right. It was Townsend-esque it was so one dimensional. Mkhi and Lingard were both narrow and offered very little second half. A couple of Mkhi’s ball at the end were just horrendous. On the right we had Valencia, who is remarkably easy to block off, due to his lack of willingness to take on his man. Show him onto his left foot, he will realise he doesn’t have one and simply pass it square. Our best bit of wide play came from Lukaku who decided to attack the flank, shrugged off the defender and fired a peach for Rashford to nod in.
Neither the manager nor the players seemed to be aware of how best to get back into this match and that is a big worry. It’s one thing to lose and fail because of poor conversion or a big refereeing decision or two, but it is another when you are behind for the majority of the game and you are unable at any point to exert your will on it.
This may well be for Mourinho, what the 2-1 loss to Bournemouth was for Van Gaal: a performance so flawed and baffling that it undermines your faith in the leader almost irreparably.