The good news for Erik ten Hag and Manchester United is that it was better than last season. But if his mission this season is to improve a little on every equivalent fixture from the last campaign, this was the easy bit. A 4-0 defeat at Crystal Palace in May was probably the nadir of a season that had many lows. Saturday’s goalless draw probably does represent progress, but the picture is far from clear.
United were by far the better side before half-time and, but for the woodwork and Dean Henderson, would have had a comfortable lead; in the game as a whole, Henderson made seven saves with a combined xG of 1.65. There is an alternative universe not very far removed from this one in which United scored with one of their early chances and went on to win just as comfortably as they had at Southampton last week. But these days, that’s just not how it goes for United.
The nature of the modern side is that they cannot be trusted. They will inexplicably fail to do the basics of defending. They will contrive comical ways to have goals ruled out for offside. They will waste opportunities. In part it’s quality, in part it’s mentality, in part it’s the area where the two meet, and in part it’s confidence.
There’s another alternative universe not very far removed from this one in which André Onana did not make a remarkable double save after 65 minutes, in which Lisandro Martínez was sent off for his disgraceful two-footed stamp, in which Eberechi Eze did not put a glaring chance wide, and the story was of an ill-disciplined team having lost three out of five in the league this season.
In fact spool back a week, imagine Cameron Archer had converted that penalty – or at least let Ben Brereton Díaz take it – when Southampton were on top and United might very easily have lost four out of five (and that win, over Fulham on the opening weekend, was far from convincing).
Of course, it’s not especially fair to deal in hypotheticals like that, to pick the worst-case scenario at every juncture – United have seven points from five games and so that is what they deserve – but equally, everything about them at the moment feels contingent. They are capable of spells of excellent football, but nobody could have any confidence in them producing it consistently.
The penalty Onana saved last week sparked a surge that led United to rattle up three at St Mary’s and seven against Barnsley, but even as they were carving Palace open again and again, the sense was that they could flip back into bad United just as suddenly. While there was no dramatic collapse, there was a regression after Joshua Zirkzee had gone off and a game that had seemed just a matter of when they would score was transformed into a game in which a Palace winner – against the balance of the match as a whole but not against the run of play at that point – felt more likely than not.
Inevitably that failure to take chances will draw focus on to Ten Hag’s decision to leave out Rashford. He insisted it was for reasons of rotation, which is reasonable enough when Amad Diallo and Alejandro Garnacho are in the squad and looking promising, but when Rashford has scored three in his last two games to end his lengthy drought, it was a decision that in retrospect is easy to criticise.
The issue, though, was less about the chances than about how the pattern of the game changed when Zirkzee departed on the hour. He offered a focal point which neither Rashford in his 15 minutes at centre-forward nor Rasmus Højlund in his were able to. Given their profiles, perhaps that’s not surprising, but no United forward won an aerial duel in the final half hour of the game.
That contributed to a raggedness that clearly encouraged Palace who, by contrast, improved with their changes. A double substitution at half-time made Palace more compact and more direct, with Ismaïla Sarr in particular making a positive impression. There are always so many sub-plots and wheels within wheels, issues of fatigue and rotation and balance, that it’s too simple to say that Glasner got his substitutions right and Ten Hag got his wrong, but it is true that Palace improved as the game went on and United regressed.
United were the better team, generating almost double the xG of Palace. It would be perfectly reasonable to portray this as a game that, on chances, they should have won.
But this is a United who specialise in not doing as well as might be expected. They did not win the game, did not build on the two comfortable wins of the past week and so the questions, once again, were about Ten Hag and his management.
