da mrbet： A week after beating the new Premier League champions, Manchester United had the final say on Manchester City’s 2017/18 title for the wrong reasons on Sunday – inadvertently getting their local rivals over the finish line with a shock defeat to West Brom.
da doce： It was a slow and stagnant performance from the Red Devils, who managed to test Ben Foster just four times in front of their own crowd and eventually succumbed to a Jay Rodriguez header after failing to handle the Baggies’ aerial threat at a corner.
And in many ways, the performance summed up many of the frustrations at Old Trafford this season; the forward play formulaic and unimaginative, and the defence proving surprising susceptible to low-quality teams considering Jose Mourinho’s focus on resilience and organisation.
So, where did it go wrong for United this time, against the Premier Leagues rock-bottom club? Football FanCast take a look…
Strong start needed against nothing-to-lose opposition
All-but-mathematically relegated, West Brom knew they had nothing to lose against United at Old Trafford, and that mentality can be incredibly dangerous when it’s not stubbed out straight away. If the Red Devils had started the game on the front foot, the Baggies’ fearlessness and resolve would have quickly disappeared – they had, after all, previously picked up just one victory in the top flight since August.
Mourinho admitted after the match that his players had shown a lack of focus all week, and that really told in the early stages when United should have started strongly and killed off the game practically from the opening whistle. Instead, West Brom were allowed into the match as United appeared stuck in second gear and from that point, confidence in Darren Moore’s game-plan quickly grew.
“I know them [my players], I smell, I have a lot of experience and that’s not me because I won eight titles and I’m not in the moon because I won against Manchester City – a match that is only three points.
“But I saw lots of people in the moon because we won against Manchester City like winning against Manchester City was the most important thing of the season.
“I won too much to just be happy with one big victory and during the week I was trying to fight that because I was feeling and you could see the difference of attitude in some players today compared to other weeks.”
United’s players expected to win
Interlinked with their slow start, there almost appeared to be an assumption amongst the players that they would stroll to victory on Sunday – perhaps because they beat Manchester City in such sensational style the weekend previous, perhaps because of West Brom’s league position. There was an arrogant expectation, something Mourinho’s post-match comments also allude to, and that inevitably translated into a lack of ruthlessness and intensity – especially on the attack.
It was as if the players thought there would be only be one outcome and while plenty have pointed to the shock defeat as symptomatic of Mourinho’s cautious philosophy, the personnel on the pitch have to share responsibility for the mentality they took into the match. There are no easy games in the Premier League, regardless of standing in the table or recent form.
Failure to use space out wide
While the players must hold their hands up for the slow start and seeming expectation to win, Mourinho’s tactics and team selection weren’t fit for purpose either. Bafflingly, Mourinho told reporters before the game that West Brom would sit deep and look to clog up space around the box – yet pretty much every United attack for the first hour came through the middle where the Baggies had two banks of four, rather than in the ever-expanding space out wide. They only actually made three open play crosses in the entire of the first half.
Of course, whipping in crosses can play as much into West Brom’s hands as trying to weave passes through their organised defensive block – Craig Dawson and Ahmed Hegazi are both formidable entities in the air. But you have to at least stretch the play to make more room for players in central areas, and that’s what United continually failed to do.
Looking at the team selection, perhaps that shouldn’t be so surprising. Alexis Sanchez and Juan Mata, the wide men on Sunday, both prefer to drift inside to take efforts at goal and create chances – one being essentially a striker and the other being a No.10.
But even so, full-backs Ashley Young and Antonio Valencia, both forward-thinking in nature, didn’t take advantage of that space on the overlap either, and United’s attacking play became incredibly narrow. That not only allowed West Brom to stay in their shape but also spring counter-attacks from it, with most of United’s players bunched up in the same area of the pitch.
So, United fans, who do you think is ultimately responsible for the shock defeat to West Brom? Let us know by voting below…
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