Squeezing To The Quarters

Manchester United took a leaf out of the great Serie A days and did the classic Italian job on AC Milan in Milan. We squeaked through by the narrowest of margins to the quarter-finals of the Europa League, a 1-0 win away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_dtj5iRERA

Good Start To The First Half, Erratic End

I felt we started the game well. On a couple of occasions, the ball into the box was just behind Mason Greenwood or Marcus Rashford. After that, we got erratic in our possession. Bruno Fernandes was one of the most wasteful players in possession. He nearly gifted a goal to Milan with a casual back pass but thankfully, Milan didn’t punish us. Fred was another who was typically poor in possession and busy chasing after his first touch. At the half-time break, I was hoping and praying for a departure from this mediocrity through the introduction of Paul Pogba and Donny van de Beek.

Pogba, Game Changer

Paul Pogba came on but not for Fred. He came on for Marcus Rashford and I was wondering why Rashford?! He was lacking proper service from midfield, it wasn’t like he was poor. Post-match we found out that Rashford’s withdrawal was due to injury. I guess it would have been too good to be true had Fred been brought off instead. Anyways, Pogba’s arrival saw an uplift in our quality. Bruno’s performance improved too and after four minutes of his introduction, Pogba took advantage of some indecision in Milan’s defence to give us the lead.

Holding The Fort

After scoring, we looked like we could run away and score a second but we didn’t. Instead, we looked to take the sting out of the game by keeping possession. I was getting frustrated on why we weren’t looking to kill off the game on the counter-attack. I was worried as well about our defence’s ability to keep out the opposition. You never know when we could concede. But full credit to our defence and our defensive performance. For all of Milan’s huffing and puffing, the closest they got to scoring was when Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s header was saved by Dean Henderson. We did the Italian job and kept out Milan which is commendable. Every single member of our back five played well.

Dr Jekyll, Mr Hyde United

Games such as these on the European stage, I feel are suited to Victor Lindelof’s game. He was immense. Maybe it worked in his favour playing against an unorthodox striker and then a target man in Zlatan. Over two legs, you could argue that we did the bare minimum to win and qualify. It was an evenly contested game over 2 legs against a fellow fallen giant of European football. We have shown this season in our European campaign that on our day, we can beat the best of the lot and lose matches that we are nailed on favourites to win. It just sums up our season. Hopefully, we get more attack-minded players back from injury and Solksjaer can drop his damned double defensive midfielder system.