By IAN LADYMAN
Published: 10:23 EST, 1 December 2024 | Updated: 10:26 EST, 1 December 2024
Come to the Premier League, they said to Ruben Amorim. Come to the Premier League, the toughest competition in European football. Come to the Premier League where there is never an easy game.
And so he did come. He came from Portugal where his Sporting Lisbon team used to win every week and braced himself for something much different. And then he ran in to Everton at Old Trafford and maybe started to wonder what on earth all that publicity had been about.
All football teams make mistakes. All players fail from time to time. Rarely like this, however. Rarely as fecklessly and embarrassingly as this. This is the type of episode that gets managers sacked and at times here Everton’s Sean Dyche must have stood there and wondered why he was bothering.
Amorim’s United, given the opportunity, were ruthless and clinical and hungry. The two goals scored by Marcus Rashford and Joshua Zirkzee may well be seen to carry an importance beyond the winning of this game. Both players have been short on confidence and maybe a little love too. Zirkzee, the young Dutch forward, also provided the pass of the game for Rashford to score the game’s third goal in the first minute of the second half.
That, though, was the only one of the goals Everton didn’t toss away on the back of their own ineptitude.
The visiting team were impressive for half an hour. They were on the front foot and playing well and with confidence of their own. They perhaps sensed opportunity here and a hint of anxiety hung in the air at Old Trafford.
And then they tossed it all away. Jarrod Branthwaite – the young Everton defender that United would like to buy – had his fingerprints on the goals scored by Rashford and then Zirkzee in 34th and 41st minutes. Rashford scored again just after the break and then, in the 64th minute, James Tarkowski joined in the clown show, giving the ball away in his own half and opening the door wide open to Zirkzee once again.
United gobbled it all up and that will have pleased Amorim. He needs some belief to grow in these players and afternoons like this really help. His team left the field caring only that they had won so handsomely, not about how they had done it.
Equally, this was a most peculiar spectacle and given that Everton have to play Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester City between now and Boxing Day it is a rather frightening thought as to where Dyche and his team may be by then.
United’s football under their new manager does already have a little more security about it. They don’t make the mistakes in possession as readily as they did under Erik ten Tag. Well, they don’t make as many of them anyway.
They remain vulnerable out of possession, however. They remain a little too easy to play through. That is just one of the reasons Everton will have been so distraught to find themselves two goals down at half-time and on the end of a hiding by home time.
Dyche’s team looked on paper as though it was one designed to contain and defend. It didn’t play like that. United had the better of the opening ten minutes but the following 25 belonged to Everton. This was the period that really had to bring them a goal and it didn’t.
A couple of early chances came United’s way. Kobbie Mainoo, back in midfield after injury, drove low and hard at Jordan Pickford in the third minute. Then a lovely Bruno Fernandes pass down the left side set Diogo Dalot away and his low cross was begging to converted only for an Everton leg to divert it behind.
United looked progressive and a little more confident but it was not a mood that was to last. Before long Everton found their way into the game. By pressing from the front, they started to hurry United’s build-up play. Then, when they had the ball themselves, they started to play it easily and accurately through to their forward players.
On the left side young Iliam Ndiaye was worrying United with his directness while the Portuguese forward Beto – chosen ahead of Dominic Calvert-Lewin – played on the shoulder of Matthijs de Ligt.
At times Everton lacked quality and suffered for want of a better final pass.
In the 12th minute Everton midfielder Abdoulaye Doucoure stole possession from Dalot and played Beto in. The 26-year-old cut inside well but only managed to shoot hopelessly wide from 17 yards.
He should have done better than that and nine minutes later he almost did. Everton played their way up the field on the back of two passes and when Dwight McNeil set Beto free, he outpaced De Ligt to round Andre Onana and slide a shot six inched the wrong sides of the post.
De Lijt looked desperately ponderous in that moment and it wasn’t long before Ndiaye was worrying United down the flank.
Everton were the better team by a margin at this point but they really did need to score. When United finally did so, it was the start of rush of three goals in twelve minutes that changed the game and sealed the game all at the same time.
The first one arrived in the 34th minute and carried a bit of luck as Rashford’s first time shot from a corner was deflected in by Branthwaite. Rashford had earned his fortune, though, with a powerful run down the left which had won the corner in the first place.
United were relieved to be ahead, for sure. Old Trafford had started to feel a little anxious in the minutes preceding that. What they probably didn’t expect was to be presented with another goal six minutes later.
This time Branthwaite had no excuses. Caught in possession on the far side by Amad Diallo, the defender’s error left United in overload heaven and it was Zirkzee who benefited, arriving late to convert in to an empty net from eight yards from a Fernandes pass.
It was a big moment for the young Dutchman, who celebrated with an imaginary machine gun. It was Everton who had fired the bullets into their own toes, though, and suddenly the game felt very different.
United now had the ability to relax and that doesn’t happen to them very often these days. Everton, for their part, now had to go chasing and that was always going to carry huge risk against a team as capable of counter attacking as United are. As it turned out, United got their opponents again in the vey first minute of the second half.
A long clearance from Everton goalkeeper Pickford was cleared and when Zirkzee played an absolutely sublime blind ball round the corner to Diallo, United were numerically superior once again. With Rashford making ground on his outside, it was all about the timing of the pass by Diallo and he judged it perfectly, enabling his team-mate to take it in his stride and finish low between Pickford’s legs from an angle.
For United and their supporters this was maybe all coming as something of a surprise. There had been little sign of a rout in the first half. But by now Everton seemed intent on self-harm and when they fell apart again to gift United a fourth goal in the 64th minute the away end started to empty.
This time the culprit was another one of Dyche’s dependables, Tarkowski. With time to make a pass inside his own half in front of the dug outs, the Everton defender delayed for a reason known only to himself. This allowed Diallo to take the ball from him and feed Zirkzee for a simple side foot finish on the far side.
Given the circumstances Dyche looked relatively calm on the touchline. But the truth is that it’s this kind of fecklessness that gets managers sacked. With half of the Everton fans now on the way home, those who remained jeered the three Dyche substitutions that immediately followed.
United had now scored four at home in the Premier League for the first time since they beat Sheffield United back in April. The good news for them was that there was plenty of time left to score some more.
That didn’t happen but four was enough. Amorim will feel he now has something on which to work. As for Dyche, he turned to salute the Everton fans who had stayed behind and was greeted by the kind of gestures that only tell a manager one thing.