You could tell how poor Manchester United’s defending was for the second goal of this 187th Manchester derby by watching David De Gea’s reaction to it.
As Kevin De Bruyne celebrated restoring Manchester City’s lead, De Gea dragged himself to his feet and lashed the rolling ball back from whence it came, i.e. the back of his own net. Then he lashed it again, low and hard towards the touchline, and slapped his post with a shake of the head and a curse to himself for good measure.
De Gea is not an especially angry young man. United’s long-serving goalkeeper usually reacts to conceding with a level of composed, head-bowed disappointment bordering on indifference. You could say he’s become used to it.
But, as the one United player who could come out of it with any credit, on this occasion he had a right to be frustrated with those in front of him. It was not the first time this season that United’s defending has undone all of their hard work, after all.
After this 4-1 defeat at the Etihad, where there was some brief resistance to the attacking prowess of the Premier League leaders until that second De Bruyne goal, United have now conceded 38 times in 28 games. That is more than half of the top flight, including third-bottom Burnley, despite being the fifth-best defence last season and the third-best the season before. What happened?
It is sometimes said that defending is as much a collective art as it is an individual one. For all the attention paid to individual errors, and despite the typical post-match analysis over who was at fault for what goal, it is often hard to pin the blame on any one person. Whatever error or mistake you are looking for, there was probably another earlier in the passage of play that was just as important. Watch United defend this season, though, and you wonder whether this is a collective breakdown or simply a bunch of broken individuals.
It has always been this way to an extent. Even when their defensive record was much better, during Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s first season in charge, United were never thought of or looked like a team that was difficult to score against. A lot of that has to do with how they concede, rather than how many. But now, the goals seem to come in more calamitous ways than in the seasons past. Forget De Bruyne’s second from this game, for example, and just look at his first.
Bernardo Silva and Jack Grealish’s combinations down the left were deft but not so devastating as to take out three players at once. That’s exactly what happened though, as Harry Maguire, Scott McTominay and Aaron Wan-Bissaka were dragged hither and tither until they could not defend a tame, pea-roller of a cross between the three of them. That may not have been a problem if Alex Telles was marking De Bruyne rather than pointing at him, essentially picking out the pass for Bernardo, and leaving the space for simple finish.
The second, though, was something else. Victor Lindelof has been one of United’s better players this season despite it being difficult on a personal level, but here he was cast as the Colin Hendry to Phil Foden’s Paul Gascoigne – the ball dinked over his head with impudence. It would have been one of the most memorable goals in the derby’s recent history. De Gea prevented that with a desperate stop and then hoped his defence would do the rest.
Maguire instead let it run through his legs, and though he blocked Bernardo’s follow-up, the ball only hit Telles and fell kindly for De Bruyne to follow in. Wan-Bissaka was involved somewhere in there too though, to be perfectly honest, it was difficult to differentiate between the several red shirts strewn out across the penalty area, face down in the turf. At least Lindelof was easy to pick out. After being beaten so badly by Foden, he had stood and watched the whole thing from the edge of the box.
The third, scored by Riyad Mahrez, deflected off Maguire while Telles played the Algerian on for the fourth. It was worth recalling, in those moments, that United’s back four cost a combined £175m. And though tempting to put it all down to the absence of Raphael Varane – another £34m, by the way – the truth is that the World Cup winner’s arrival from Real Madrid has not had the expected effect. United have often looked just as vulnerable with him in the side.
Ralf Rangnick prioritised keeping clean sheets above all else when he walked through the door at Old Trafford. It is easy to see why. When United conceded just twice in his first four league games, he suggested a corner might have been turned. The fact those games came against some of the bluntest attacks went largely ignored. In this, not just his first Manchester derby but first meeting against a “big six” rival, they were devastated. 38 goals conceded in 28 games is not up to standard, and you feel it could be even worse if not for their understandably frustrated goalkeeper.
