It must surely amount to something if you’re the only side not to have succumbed to the destruction wreaked by the juggernaut, Liverpool, that’s left a clear trail of devastation in its wake. Not only that, but to have chalked up splendid wins against Tottenham and Manchester City earlier in the month. This is the stuff that glittering testimonials are built around!
But to have all this suddenly turn around and give you a vicious, disrespectful bite on the tender behind really has to chasten the soul and dampen the spirit in no small measure. A 2-0 loss to Watford?? What was that again? It wasn’t even a death by misadventure but one attributable to various glaring shortcomings that a seasoned manager with a fine pedigree should long have noticed the ominous cracks in the wall and addressed. Not wait until the walls start to tumble one by one and then begin to think of what’s gone wrong.
This most recent debacle at Vicarage Road follows on the heels of similar disparaging losses to Bournemouth, West Ham, Crystal Palace and Newcastle. The errors by Aaron Wan-Bissaka and David De Gea were surely a belated Christmas gift to rock-bottom Watford. Well, now that it’s already happened and to ensure the rot doesn’t get any worse, it’s high time for the big guns at Old Trafford to take a long, hard look of introspection at the whole turn of events and begin to plug the holes.
It was uncomfortably evident that United sorely lacked both the intensity and the quality needed at Vicarage Road. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer took a bite of the humble pie and acknowledges Manchester United are some ways further behind in their development than he had anticipated. He even went so far as to admit that his side did not deserve to win!
“Expect us to be more consistent, definitely more experienced and learning from these setbacks, but at the moment we’re a little bit further behind than what I was hoping for, yeah. It’s taken Liverpool a few years to get to that state and we need to just keep on building because that’s what we want to get to.”
One of the few positives at Old Trafford was the return of Paul Pogba who did appear sharp coming off the bench.
“Let’s see how he reacts to this, how he feels,” Solskjaer said. “He did really well when he came on. Big, big plus. It might be that we do get him in from the start because you just want to get more and more into the team when he plays. He can play anywhere. He can play the whole midfield. He’s a box-to-box midfielder.”
Big words indeed. Huge hopeful sentiments. Let’s just hope for the sake of the Red Devils, and their loyal millions of fans around this globe, that this isn’t again some verbal hogwash to assuage guilty souls.