Manchester United vs Liverpool is dubbed as one of the most epic fixtures in the Premier League and is always one of the most hotly contested matches irrespective of whether it’s at Anfield or at Old Trafford. The match was critical for both teams considering Liverpool needed the win to stay in the run for the title, while this was Man Utd’s first match against one of the top six teams in the Premier League.
Jose Mourinho is known to be pragmatic and was expected to prioritise a clean sheet considering many of the players, 14 to be exact, are returning from the international break and with a few key players out with injuries. United struggled to score and finish matches last season and this season things have looked up. This match was supposed to the acid test for Man Utd’s attack.
On the other hand. Jurgen Klopp has been a staunch follower of fast, attacking football, and can be depended upon to build beautiful, free-flowing football, but Sadio Mane’s absence was expected to hurt Liverpool.
Additionally, Liverpool are yet to build a strong defence and consistently allow the opposition to score. As a result, the match was billed as the perfect test for both the sides and promised to be an intense 90 minutes.
It was indeed an intense match, and a 0-0 draw seems typically unfair to Liverpool, considering they were technically superior to United. However, a team is usually expected to have showcase two necessary components to win a match – attack and defence.
Liverpool started off strong in midfield and kept 78% possession during the first half. They also created more shots on goal (5) as against Man United’s solitary chance from Romelu Lukaku. Their defence was never truly tested other than that single opportunity but it looked possible to breach.
Dejan Lovren and Joel Matip did make quite a few interceptions and kept United’s attackers at bay. Liverpool’s true brilliance was in form of free-flowing football courtesy of Mohamed Salah’s beautiful footwork, Emre Can’s sublime passing and Phillipe Coutinho’s trickery.
Unfortunately, as Nemanja Matic confessed in an interview prior to the match, Mourinho did his homework and made sure Antonio Valencia kept Coutinho quite throughout the match. Other than a few sparks of brilliance, he was not gifted much space.
On the other hand, the entire United team, except Lukaku, seemed totally concentrated on defence. Even attacking midfielders like Anthony Martial (and later Marcus Rashford, when he was substituted in for Martial) made key contributions in defence.
The sad part though is that United faltered terribly in possession. While they were exceptional as a defensive outfit, they seemed like fish-out-of-water in possession and failed to create opportunities and build an attack from the interceptions.
In addition, they frequently made wrong passes and gave out possession far too easily. Perhaps, Man United’s pass accuracy of 81% as against Liverpool’s 89% says it all in this regard. If Matic et al. had managed to build up play, as has been characteristic of them in this season, they might have even won the match.
Henrikh Mkhitaryan’s early second-half substitution is perhaps a testament to the fact that Mourinho might not have even wanted to risk building up attacks, in fear of getting caught out of position by Liverpool in the counter-attack. But even so, had the Old Trafford outfit succeeded in the holding onto the ball, they might have been themselves with far greater shots on goal.
The signs were there that this would be defensive show early on when the team news announced a 3-4-3 line-up and considering that Mourinho sees the three at the back, as a five at the back (since two wing-backs track back to defend during counter-attacks).
This performance was similar to the same lacklustre and teeth-crunching performance Man United had put up last season.
After seeing the last seven matches, there were glimpses of hope that maybe, the days of Ferguson were back. But considering this performance, there still seems to be a long way to go. In Mourinho’s defence, the players came back from international duty only a few days ago and they still might not be in the best of conditions. But does that excuse really stick when it comes to possession? And I’m not talking about keeping possession for the majority of the match, but just long enough to pass it the next body upfield. Additionally, wrong passes were aplenty and only added to the Red Devil’s woes.
Finally, this was Lukaku’s first match against a big team in Man United colours and it would have been the perfect opportunity to shed that flat-track-bully tag. Unfortunately, poor finishing in front of the goal and constant pressure from Lovren restricted him from proving his worth in a big-ticket game.
The season is still early and this is the first of such a performance from United. Mourinho still has a long way to go to build up a team that can challenge Manchester City and Chelsea for the title.
