Interesting thing, perception. While the Guardian’s Manchester football correspondent chose to focus on Manchester United’s unbeaten record in the build-up to the home game against West Brom, the rest of us ummed and ahhed and then could hold in our questions no more. Haven’t United fallen far short of Premier League expectations this season? Don’t they merit criticism, rather than the opposite?
As it happened, Saturday gave us all ammunition. Jackson can still point to United’s unbeaten league run stretching to 19 matches, but the headline news from Saturday was another sluggish, tepid home draw.
Stoke, Burnley, West Ham, Hull, Bournemouth, West Brom. These dropped points are the handbrake applied to any progress under Mourinho, first threatening and now effectively destroying United’s hopes of Champions League qualification through league position. That was, should it need repeating, the bare minimum expectation for the pre-season second title favourites.
The post-match reaction brought a display of typical Mourinho moping, ranting at the excellent Conor McNamara of BBC Sport before blaming fixture scheduling, fatigue, the international break, West Brom’s stubbornness and the ineffectiveness of United’s own forwards for their inability to win at home for the ninth time in the league this season.
“You have four creative players, four players who you need to score a goal for you, and they didn’t,” was Mourinho’s frustrated take. “They had flashes, they had glimpses, they had moments but they don’t have consistency, and we pay two more points for that.”
Manchester United’s manager is within his rights to question the performances of his attackers, both on Saturday and this season. Zlatan Ibrahimovic is not blameless but his goal return merits absolution from strong censure. Anthony Martial, Marcus Rashford, Paul Pogba, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Wayne Rooney, with eight home goals between them in the league, offer no such caveat. Martial and Rashford, with two goals from their last 48 combined shots, are the most obvious targets for Mourinho’s ire; youth has rarely been an acceptable defence.
Mourinho’s team now rank tenth in a Premier League table based on home results, behind Leicester, Burnley and West Brom, amongst others. They rank 14th for home goals, astonishing considering the weapons in their attacking armoury. To have scored fewer goals than their top-six peers is one thing, but to have scored fewer than Swansea, Leicester, Burnley, Watford and Hull is quite another.
The manager will point to Manchester United’s chance created statistics and reasonably expect his side to have scored more than their current total. Only Liverpool create more chances per game than United, and even then the gap is only miniscule (0.02 per game). Yet Liverpool have scored 22 more times. Bournemouth, who have scored the same number of goals than United (albeit in two extra matches), create almost 4.5 fewer chances per game than United’s 13.11.
At Old Trafford, that problem only becomes more pronounced. Manchester United rank 14th for goals scored per home game, but first for chances created per home game and second for shots. If Mourinho thinks his side are unfortunate and that they have let down their manager by poor shooting, the raw data offers supporting evidence.
Yet Mourinho must take his own share of the guilt. No football manager has ever enjoyed the luxury of blaming players while their own reputation remains unharmed, and there are relevant questions to ask of Mourinho’s role in the failure of his forwards. Is Martial suffering from the lack of trust shown in him by his manager? Is Rashford struggling from a lack of regular starts? Has Mourinho been undone by a reliance on Ibrahimovic?
In addition, Manchester United’s recent home problems stem not just from end product but style. For all the valid criticism of the sluggish build-up play under Mourinho’s predecessor, the performance against West Brom was reminiscent of the worst of the Louis van Gaal dirge. Rather than use the pace of Martial and Rashford, United simply wandered the ball into the final third before stopping, pausing, struggling to find a gap and then crossing the ball into the box or to the feet of a forward now surrounded by two or three players. United attempted 29 crosses in open play against a central defence of Gareth McAuley and Jonny Evans when playing Rashford as a lone central striker.
West Brom – and other teams too – have arrived at Old Trafford intent on defending their goal and earning a point, offering little attacking intention. Anyone criticising them for that tactic is entirely missing the point: The onus is on United to break them down. Tony Pulis knew the best way to frustrate Mourinho and United, for it is no longer a secret.
United’s slow build-up only assists opposition teams. Frustration abounds until a cross or shot is attempted from a distance that makes success unlikely. It is interesting to note that while Manchester United rank second for home shots, they rank joint 12th for percentage of shots taken from inside the area. Against West Brom, half of their shots were from inside the penalty box. Only Burnley, Sunderland and West Brom registered a lower percentage in the Premier League on Saturday.
Mourinho is right to expect more from his forwards, and public criticism of his players is nothing new. Yet Manchester United’s manager must accept at least part-culpability for the form of individuals, and the majority of the blame for the general failure of the system. Given that we are now into April, it isn’t unreasonable to expect a style that plays to the strengths of his attacking players, rather than undermines them.
Daniel Storey
