The images are as gripping as they are distressing.
This Sunday, while there is still a good half hour to play against Liverpool, thousands of spectators leave Old Trafford, ulcerated by the cataclysmic performance of their team.
And for good reason, the Red Devils were already led 5-0 (final score) on their lawn against Liverpool, the historic rival.
A hat-trick from Mohamed Salah and goals from Naby Keita and Diogo Jota turned the “Theater of Dreams” into a nightmare place for Ole Gunnar Solksjaer's men.
This defeat, probably the worst in the club's recent history, gave a violent spotlight on all the failings of this team, already seen during its previous outings.
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A defensive sector totally outdated
Manchester United have conceded 9 goals in their last two Premier League games. Before the debacle of this weekend, the teammates of Paul Pogba, excluded Sunday, had already sunk, to a lesser extent, on the lawn of Leicester (4-2) during the previous day. Match during which the Red Devils conceded no less than 22 shots including 11 on target. Amputee of Raphaël Varane, his summer recruit injured in the final of the League of Nations, the Mancunian rearguard does not really know where she lives and has shown incredible gaps at this level on these two meetings. To this unflattering observation, we can also add the two goals conceded in one half against Atalanta Bergamo last week in the Champions League, despite a 3-2 final victory for Manchester.
Against Liverpool, the entire collective has completely lost control.
But when a team concedes four goals before the break, all eyes are naturally on the defensive sector and in particular on the duo Shaw / Maguire.
The first, who occupied the left flank of the defense, offered boulevards to Mohamed Salah and four of the five goals conceded by the Red Devils come from his side.
As for Maguire, the most expensive defender in history after his € 91million transfer from Leicester in 2018, he suffered terribly in the face of the vivacity of the Reds forwards.
Regularly late, misaligned and often at fault, he is the symbol of a sector of play completely adrift since the start of the season.
In front, Cristiano Ronaldo saves the furniture but ...
Offensively, Manchester United struck a blow this summer by recruiting Cristiano Ronaldo.
The Portuguese has thus made his comeback in the Mancunian jersey he already wore between 2003 and 2009. From an accounting point of view, the start of the season for CR7 is successful since he scored 6 goals in 9 games all. competitions confused with the Red Devils.
He even offered victory twice to his team by scoring the decisive goal against Villarreal (2-1) and then against Atalanta Bergamo (3-2) in the Champions League.
Unfortunately, the five-fold Golden Ball is alone on the attacking front.
The former Real Madrid has scored more goals than Martial, Rashford, Cavani and Sancho combined.
Read also115 goals, 10th hat-trick ... Cristiano Ronaldo breaks new records with Portugal
However, the integration of Ronaldo has been questioning for a few weeks. The native of Madeira has struggled to join a real collective since his arrival. A problem far from recent and which had already been pointed out during his time at Juventus Turin. “
The presence of Cristiano had a great influence on us. Just training with him gave us something more but subconsciously the players started to think that his presence alone was enough to win games,
”Leonardo Bonucci said in an interview with
The Athletic
.
And the Italian defender added:
"Maybe it was a given that if we gave the ball to Cristiano, he would win the game
."
In other words, the presence of CR7 on the meadow would magnetize the ball in its feet to the detriment of a well-oiled collective.
The player's individual statistics at the start of the season associated with the sluggish collective productions of the Red Devils tend to confirm this observation.
A coach more threatened than ever
Traditionally, it is the responsibility of the coach to bring out this collective strength. But in this case, Ole Gunnar Solksjaer does not seem able to find the solution. The Norwegian, a former club icon as a player, has come under fire after the scathing setback this weekend. “
Solksjaer is not the right manager for Manchester United if this club is to take it to the next level. He will never be Klopp, Guardiola or Tuchel,
”said former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher on the
Sky Sports set
.
Certain choices of the Scandinavian technician are particularly pointed out, in particular the underuse of the Dutchman Donny Van de Beek, sparkling with Ajax Amsterdam in 2019 and who has almost disappeared from the radars since his arrival in England. His choice to start Maguire in the game against Leicester when the Briton had just returned from injury was also widely commented or even contested inside the locker room. Ivorian defender Eric Bailly is said to have openly criticized his coach for this decision.
Faced with such an impasse, several names are already mentioned to take over from the former Red Devils striker on the bench.
Antonio Conte and Zinédine Zidane come back with insistence.
Names Erik Ten Hag (Ajax Amsterdam) or Brendan Rodgers (Leicester) are also mentioned by the British newspaper
The Sun
.
For now, no Zidane or Conte on the Manchester United bench but an Ole Gunnar Solksjaer, more and more isolated at the head of a drifting club.
7th in the Premier League, Manchester United will face Tottenham, Atalanta Bergamo and Manchester City successively in the next three matches.
Not sure that the club and Solksjaer, in the current state of things, do not come out of this sequence unscathed.