Manchester United’s Difficult Season So Far Cannot Be Blamed on Luck Alone

Another profoundly frustrating draw has left Manchester United in even deeper trouble in their quest for Champions League qualification. What was an eight-point gap behind the top four has become nine.

With Liverpool and Manchester City both losing, a win at Goodison Park, obviously, would have narrowed it to seven. This latest draw was the second in the recent spell to serve up this specific brand of frustration.

Against Stoke City, Burnley and West Ham United, the Red Devils were much the better side and created significantly more and better chances than the opposition. The Everton game, though, had more in common with the recent 1-1 draw with Arsenal at Old Trafford.

United were, for much of the game, the better side. In both games, that dominance eventually turned into a narrow lead, but after neither of these two games could they really decry a slew of missed chances.

Against Arsenal, they could have at least claimed that their opposition did little to create opportunities of its own, but that was not the case against Everton. The Toffeemen outshot United, 13-10, and got six shots on target to the Red Devils’ two. The most damning statistic from United’s perspective is that their last shot came in the 66th minute.

Jose Mourinho’s handling of the latter part of the game ultimately cost United dearly. First off, he brought Marcus Rashford on for Anthony Martial. That substitution was emblematic of his general insistence on like-for-like changes.

I agree with Jose Mourinho on the improvement in performance, but it doesn’t make disappointment easier to swallow #EVEMUN #MUFC #EFC pic.twitter.com/TeYS2yYMA2

— Full Time DEVILS (@FullTimeDEVILS) December 4, 2016

Even as a like-for-like change, it was a pretty serious mistake. First off, Martial had been a clear and present danger to Everton throughout the game, and losing him always threatened to take some of the life out of United’s attack.

Secondly, he is a safer pair of hands—or rather, feet—than Rashford from a defensive perspective. Martial worked tirelessly on the left flank for Louis van Gaal and has played enough games there to gain a significant appreciation for the art of defending.

Rashford, on the other hand, is a new convert to the wings and has understandably struggled with issues around positioning.

It was the man he was supposed to have been covering who put in the cross for Arsenal’s equaliser at Old Trafford, for example. That is not to pin the blame for that goal entirely on the youngster, but merely to point out that it is an issue.

Bringing on Rashford for Ibrahimovic, on the other hand, could have given United an incredibly mobile front three, had Henrikh Mkhitaryan stayed on the pitch. With the way the pattern of the game was going, a counter-attacking force like that could have been really effective.

Instead, though, Martial came off for Rashford, and an even worse substitution was to follow. The power of hindsight is all-knowing, of course, and perhaps, somewhere in an alternate universe, Marouane Fellaini cleared a Romelu Lukaku shot off the line or something.

However, the moment Fellaini took off his training top and it became clear …

continue reading in source www.bleacherreport.com