Your challenge is to name a more unlikely, ill-fitting and patched-up Manchester United back-four than the pair of midfielders and two 19-year-olds who ended up defending David de Gea’s net against the league champions and noisy neighbours on the other side of town.
Antonio Valencia, who started right-back here, is a right winger. Michael Carrick, who came on as an emergency centre-back, is a holding midfielder. And Luke Shaw and Paddy McNair are both teenagers.
Necessity, of course, once Chris Smalling had decided that one aberration really ought to be followed up with another (injuries are another mitigating factor). But how the club of Steve Bruce and Gary Pallister, of Jaap Stam and Rio Ferdinand, have had to embrace such extreme ad-libbing is now the most pressing question in Louis van Gaal’s jerky first campaign.
LVG, as we know him, was without Rafael, Phil Jones and Jonny Evans. With respect to those players, it would hardly compare to Chelsea losing John Terry, Gary Cahill and Branislav Ivanovic. United are selecting from a thin defensive base anyway. When they have to press gang Valencia into the right-back slot against a side of City’s attacking potency – and rely on two 19-year-olds to shore up a 10-man team – the problem starts to look like one of recruitment and managerial judgment.
Against the league’s two best teams United have shown signs of recovery. Flashes of verve against Chelsea last Sunday lit the path to the sky blue half of town, where they survived three strong penalty claims and came snapping back at the new kings of Greater Manchester in the last 20 minutes. To see United indignant about being a goal down – and not deterred by numerical inferiority – was to feel a stirring of the olde Old Trafford spirit.
For much of this campaign United have looked like powerful businessmen getting to know each other at a convention. There has been no linking rhythm or shared sense of purpose. The team has prodded, drifted sideways and then stopped to have a think about it. The late airdrop of expensive talent has rendered this squad more valuable than the gang put together by Sheikh Mansour’s billions. A minimum return on this summer’s spending is a bit of togetherness and fight.
That much is coming, but it remains hard to see how United can improve on 13 points from 10 games without quality, consistency of selection and sheer rigour along the back line. Even a fit Rafael has not proved his claim to be United’s automatic right-back. Rojo looks more of a left-back than a centre-half but continues to be used in the more central position by Van Gaal.
Shaw meanwhile is one of a number of Southampton exiles who must pine for St Mary’s. Like Adam Lalllana, Rickie Lambert and Dejan Lovren, he has found the “step-up” problematic. Under intense pressure here he grew in stature. McNair, too, was undaunted by the task, and set off on one sweet ball-carrying run from the back. Smalling’s incredible double brain freeze, though, only added to the scepticism of those who say he has failed to fulfil his promise.
His first caution, for raising a leg when Joe Hart was kicking from hand, was mildly daft: a reflexive challenge, contrary to the laws. What could possibly persuade a centre-back that the best place for him to stand when the ball was about to be launched downfield was in front of the opposition keeper? Why would he leave his own back-four one short in such a routine situation? Booking No 1. More caution for the rest of the game, you would imagine.
Next came the amnesia, or recklessness, or both, when Smalling launched himself at Milner’s feet and sent him looping into the air. Thirty-eight minutes had passed. Not since he turned up at a party dressed as a suicide bomber has Smalling invited such ridicule and displeasure. Derbies do strange things to players. But agitation is a poor defence ruining your team’s chances of winning.
“Not very smart,” Van Gaal called it.
United motored home level on points with West Bromwich Albion, who were denied the luxury of a £150m summer splurge on players. For Van Gaal’s more creative players, defensive weakness provides a convenient veil to hide behind.
There is no consistent spark in Robin van Persie’s game. Where once he would attack loose balls with demonic relish, now he simply scuttles forward hoping something will turn up. He lacks conviction. The simplest interpretation is that doubt now swarms his thinking. Angel di Maria was off form, too, wasting possession, failing to lift corner kicks beyond the first defender and darting across the pitch without hurting City’s defence. Van Gaal needs Radamel Falcao to find full form and fitness, to apply more pressure on Van Persie and Wayne Rooney.
Given the turmoil of the past 12 months, United’s fans will draw encouragement from the battling urges displayed against Chelsea and City. Recoveries often start with heightened intent. It would take an alchemist, though, to forge a title-winning defence from the resources available to Van Gaal, whose attempts to make the front of the team sing are undermined by crashes and bangs at the back.
At the weekend Gary Neville argued in Telegraph Sport that traditional defending has been sacrificed to technical excellence and fluency. United’s problem here was even more fundamental. Their back-four was a line of misfits and Smalling a liability.
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