The art of kicking a dead horse
Yesterday afternoon, somewhat at a loose end and suffering from the effects of the first of my annual ‘two colds per winter’, by chance I realised that Southampton were hosting Manchester United in football’s Premiership and switched to BT Sport’s live coverage (commentary by Darren Fletcher with comments by Steve McManaman) shortly before kick-off at 5.30pm.
I’ll be honest. I’m no soccer expert and my decision to tune in was fuelled by idle curiosity plus the opportunity to see for myself just how the lacklustre United team of Jose Mourinho – certainly in terms of results and the consensus of informed punditry – would perform in what, on the face of it, I had presumed would be a relatively undemanding fixture given Southampton’s poor form and lowly league position.
Shots of Mourinho and his Southampton counterpart Mark Hughes, the former United striker, looking tense and grim-faced in their ‘dug-out area and place in the stand respectively, were featured in the build-up to the game with accompanying commentary about how important the outcome was going to be for both of them.
And that’s all I wanted to mention, really.
Everything panned out rather as I had expected and as it happened I only watched the first half of what turned out to be a 2-2 draw before leaving my drawing-room to carry out some errand or another, never to return.
Rusters who did not go to the match, or watch it on TV, can read the newspaper reports to gain an impression of what happened and in which order.
I shall confine myself to recording here that after twenty minutes Southampton were deservedly two goals up, to the delight of the home crowd and stunned amazement of their manager, and after forty the score was level.
The best that I can offer from my own observation and analysis is that United were just as poor as the advance publicity, radio phone-ins and journalism of the last three months had been suggesting.
BT Sport had predicted beforehand that they would line up with three at the back but shortly after the kick-off Fletcher and McManaman had noted that in practice they had adopted a ‘five at the back’ formation. Which may have been just as well as from the off Southampton were immediately the brighter and more creative team.
Back in my youth the stereotypical one-eyed view of sometime Chelsea and United midfielder and England international Ray Wilkins was that – rather like the old gag that Italian WW2 tanks were built with one forward gear and three reverse ones (rather than the other way around) – his hard-drive had been programmed so that he only made short sideways or backward passes, this as part of a team strategy to waste time and avoid defeat.
It seemed upon yesterday’s evidence that Wilkins remains the patron saint of Mourinho’s United. For someone who was never a United supporter – forty years ago they were probably my fourth favourite First Division club [and I had to pause typing just now to formally remind myself of the order of that list] – nevertheless I used to enjoy their swashbuckling style of play in days of yore during the second half of the 20th Century and, of course, like half the British nation had ‘bought into’ their glamorous and sometimes tragic history.
Even discounting for the rose-tinted spectacles through which I review memories from the past these days, I have never before seen Manchester United playing with such an insipid, almost disinterested, attitude.
The lack of coordinated effort and sheer number of unforced errors in the United team – e.g. long balls sent aimlessly towards nobody in particular (or indeed nobody at all), clumsy tackles, misunderstandings with team-mates as to who was going to move where in order to make themselves available for a pass – was both puzzling and remarkable.
As was the players’ response to the first goal, an excellent strike from Stuart Armstrong, Southampton’s recently-arrived former Celtic player.
I’m not saying it was wan resignation but it certainly seemed to me as if United half-expected to go behind, or at least were not at all surprised that they had.
Perhaps it’s been that sort of season for them. Or perhaps they are playing as poorly as they are in order to try and get Jose the sack. It’s difficult to tell.
Mourinho must have been seething inside at the wafer-thin defending but he did his best to appear completely impassive and impervious to events.
When Southampton’s second hit the top left hand corner of the net – this a brilliant dead-ball free kick by Cedric Soares from about ten to twelve yards beyond and to slightly to the left of the penalty area – again he remained deadpan.
In contrast the home supporters were suddenly delirious and Hughes looked as though the weight of the world had just been removed from his shoulders.
At half-time (by when United had briefly raised the intensity to score twice but then slip back into their previous mediocrity) both teams knew they were going to be in an arm-wrestle for the remainder of the afternoon and that, certainly on the evidence of the first stanza, neither were going to be capable of dominating it.
It was at that point that something else beckoned and, weighing things up, I decided that if United weren’t interested enough to care about pushing on, then neither was I in watching them.
I believe this morning that United are seventh in the Premiership league table. It feels about right.
