Last week, I spoke about how those famous away wins were beginning to fade into background: the results against Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City feel an age away, especially now we have gone four games without a win. What’s more worrying is that we have not had a clean sheet since the Newcastle win – that’s ten games in a row. Yes, we are consistently getting on the score sheet (bar Watford, and even when we get trashed, like at Spurs), but a top quality side relies on its back line and we desperately need a good clean sheet – something Manchester United have become very good at recently.
That is indeed a worry given that we were frequently defensively strong under Allardyce – even in the season when we almost went down, we had one of the highest number of clean sheets in the league. We are clearly an attacking threat, but the defensive frailties are a concern. However, what was more concerning about the draw against West Brom was not the defence but the attack. Bilic said a few weeks back he wanted us to shoot more but we have not taken that on board. We seem to have this weird tendency to not shoot when he should and to shoot when he shouldn’t, Mauro Zarate being the prime offender in the latter category. What was upsetting about Sunday was that we clearly deserved to win but just did not take the chances: we need to be far more lethal when it comes to these sorts of games.
Which brings me to my next point: the worrying tendency to not be able to beat teams at home: Norwich, Bournemouth, West Brom – they are teams we should be claiming three points from. We have not from any of those fixtures. I was called a pessimist before for pointing this out, but now I feel we should all be collectively concerned at our inability to be ruthless and to get three points from what, are on paper, easy games. And I have to admit I thought West Brom were one of the dullest, poorest sides that I’ve ever seen in the Premier League, hence their desire to time waste from the minute they equalised.
This brings me on to my belief that that’s why we need a result at Old Trafford: because if I am to believe that this is genuine team with a genuine hope of a top ten finish, then we should be able to muster the courage and energy of those famous, distant wins from a few months back. We should be able to show an ability to bounce back from four fixtures without a win, to bounce back from two consecutive losses away that have seen us ship six goals. Or we have to admit that the shine has gone from those early results and we now accept that we have to start performing more solidly and convincingly against lesser opposition. We have Aston Villa coming up soon, and that is a perfect opportunity to show that we can be clinical, rather than the West Ham of old that always messes up.