Between Manchester United's victory over Everton at Goodison Park and the present day, a lot has changed.
It is difficult to believe that it was only six months ago that Cristiano Ronaldo was scoring his 700th career league goal in a 2-1 success. One month later he would be gone as the club showed their faith in Erik ten Hag.
At that point, nobody would have expected Wout Weghorst to be in contention to line up for the Reds at Old Trafford when these two teams meet in the reverse fixture. Despite all these changes though, one thing is still a constant.
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Following the defeat of the Toffees, Ten Hag highlighted what the next step was for his Reds as they looked to progress. He said: "The ball can always come in, but we should have scored already for a third and then it was game over.
"We had many more spaces we didn’t use on the attacking transition and that’s the next step we have to make. Happy with the result of course. They’re difficult to score against but we scored two, maybe three, so that’s good."
While the Dutchman was diplomatic with his criticism of his side's lack of a cutting edge then, he must have hoped that the situation would have improved by Easter Saturday.
Unfortunately, as Wednesday night proved, United remain infuriating to watch in front of goal. Against Brentford, the Reds had 18 shots but only three tested David Raya.
At Newcastle, the Reds only mustered six shots in total as the Magpies ran away with a deserved victory. This has been the recurring theme throughout the season.
A meagre +5 goal difference after 28 matches could seriously jeopardise the Reds' hopes of finishing in the top four, especially considering how tight the battle is for the final two Champions League places. It is no wonder then that Ten Hag has made a striker a number one priority in the summer.
United have shown very little sign of being able to make the next step which the Dutchman outlined at Goodison Park but thanks to a huge improvement defensively, the Reds are still in the conversation. Ten Hag will be more hopeful than expectant that his team will be able to address their forward woes on Saturday.
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