My first take on the game on Sunday was that United were going to win no matter what, but the way they started the game was shocking and appaling. Sitting down and watching the game I could feel my skin crawling with disgust at such a perfomance, however I still believe that we coule have perfomed better in the second half, but the red card to our best player basically canceled out any chance we had of a comeback.
Who Is To Blame Erik Or The Players
Hearing that Manchester United manager Erik Ten Hag is facing the sack is definitely not new to any football fan out there, well it's another poor perfomance and the self-proclaimed social media jury is out on Ten Hag. United's last loss was against Liverpool who beat them three nil at Old Trafford, after that was a three nill dominant win over Southampton, a 7 nil thumping of Barnsley and a game away at Crystal Palace which any reasonable individual will agree should have ended in the first half. The only game were United lifted their foot from the gas was the 1 all draw against FC Twente in the Europa league, during all of these games there were a lot of praises aimed at United for keeping possesion, carrying out repeated patterns of play, creating a lot of chances and playing out from the back, but facing another big team in the Premeir League, the United players forgot all of that discipline and were so bad they could not keep the ball for 5 seconds in the first half. Not suprisingly all fingers were pointed at the manager, "he should be sacked", United have no playing style", as if it was not the same United team we were all praising last week. I believe United's problem has strongly to do with mentality and consistency, against both Liverpool and Tottenaham United seem to play well after they have already lost both games, they played better than Liverpool in the second half and played better than Tottenham in the second despite been a man down and conceding two goals. I think Ten Hag needs to work on his players mentality and confidence especially in such high pressure games, because United can definitely not be this bad.
Bruno Fernandes Red Card
From a United point a view, we were as bad as we could possibly be in that first half, but I have seen United be this bad and still come out to play better in the second half, the game was against Tottenham not Liverpool or City, I was convinced we were going to stage a comback in the second half. But that believe was snuffed out when Chris Kavanagh showed a red card to our skipper, I'm not going too talk about my own opinion for the sake of being just, but rather I would point out to two retired refrees who gave out their opinion. Former football refrees Cheif Kieth Hackett had this to say "This was a very unfortunate slip by Bruno Fernandes on a disastrous afternoon for Manchester United. I can see why the referee may have decided this was worthy of a red card, as Fernandes looked to challenge James Maddison with Tottenham on the breakaway. However, after multiple viewings, I lean towards a yellow card. I feel the refree Chris Kavanagh would have benefitted from being asked to look at the incident again on the pitch-side monitor. He was in an excellent postion and the VAR would go with the refree's call- there was no way they would overturn this as they would say it is not a clear and obvious error- but giving him the benefit of multiple replays and angles could have resulted in a different decision."
And these are the words of former refree and Sky Sports analyst Dermot Gallagher "Right, a lot of debate. Look, that's refree's view, I dont think he can see it, that's my first point. I dont think the refree sees the challenge happen. The assistant flags it, he has a different view and angle. When you play it through, you can see it's a glancing blow, he doesn't catch him as he thinks. I can understand the refree not seeing it, he has to go off the assistant's view on that, he thinks it's high and caught him, but he hasn't. It's an optical illusion when you see it, a more palatable decision would've been a yellow card".
What Is Next For Man United
The decision from the Man United dressing room after Sunday's game was to "reset" and go again at FC Porto on thursday, I believe the players are still firmly behind Erik Ten Hag, I expect to see more effort and motivation from them going forward, but I have this team bounce back from more horrible situations than this, so I strongly believe they would do so again.
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