_SIX ASIDES
Premier League
Fulham 1, United 1_
**Quiz question: in which of the past five seasons did United make their best start?** (As measured by the first five league games.) This year, as you know, they’re 12th with five points under Michael Carrick. At the same stage last year, under Ruben Amorim, they were 11th with seven points. The year before, under Erik ten Hag, the same – 11th with seven points. In 2023-24, also under Ten Hag, they were 13th with six points. The strongest start came in 2022-23, when they were fifth with nine points. That was the year that is remembered for a dreadful start, because they lost at home to Brighton on the opening weekend and then capsized at Brentford – before Ten Hag, who had only just arrived, changed course and turned the ship around, helped by the last-minute signing of Casemiro. So let’s not have a fit because they’ve started with another stutter.
**A club, like any institution, has its habits and foibles, some of which are mysteriously hard to shift.** A Dutchman, a Portuguese and an Englishman walk into the manager’s office – not at the same time, which rather ruins the joke – and none of them can stop United toiling in the early autumn. This year’s goal difference, zero, is their equal-best at this stage in the past five seasons (with 2024-25). The Premier League is becoming more volatile, as last year’s table after five games shows. Arne Slot’s Liverpool were top with five wins, Thomas Frank’s Spurs were third with three wins, Pep Guardiola’s Man City were ninth with two wins (ahead of Amorim’s United only on goal difference), and Unai Emery’s Aston Villa were 18th with no wins at all. In the end, Villa finished above Liverpool, City came close to winning the title, Spurs were 17th, United were comfortably third, and the only one of those managers still in place is the one who started that season worst. Recent history is telling us, loud and clear, not to read much into the first five games. And the mini-league of the past month has been a particularly strange one, with only Arsenal, City and Brighton winning more than half their games. It’s been like a Bond film with a pre-credit sequence that has some thrills and spills but doesn’t hang together.
**The Fulham game was a strange one too.** It veered from walking football to basketball. There were 41 shots, but they added up to only 3.22 expected goals. On xG, as in reality, it was a draw – Fulham 1.62, United 1.60. In terms of shots, it should have been an away win – Fulham 12, United 29. But it feels as if the shots are part of the problem. As Statman Dave pointed out, United are now top of the shots table with 113, but second-bottom for quality with an average per shot of 0.09 xG. A couple of hours earlier, Brian Brobbey of Sunderland had helped himself to a hat-trick against City with three tap-ins. United need to rediscover that art. When they do put together a fluent move, they tend to spoil it by not applying the finishing touch – or by not having anyone in the six-yard box, because Matheus Cunha is not a poacher. All three of his shots here, whether he was nominally a striker or a winger, came from his favourite place – in the inside-left channel, outside the box. And just when you were wondering why he takes so many long shots, one of them saved United from a third successive defeat.
**A draw at Fulham is not a bad result.** Last season, only six teams went to Craven Cottage in the league and won. United’s problem is that, after losing at Hull, they need to win a couple of games against the odds. There will be further opportunities in October to turn likely draws (or defeats) into wins – Leeds away, Chelsea away, Liverpool away. And in two of those games, they should be back in their comfort zone, playing on the counter.
**Michael Carrick has been let down by the owners.** When they should have bought Ollie Watkins and Lewis Hall, they failed to buy any striker or left-back, and both decisions have already come back to bite them as Luke Shaw and Benjamin Sesko pulled up lame. Renewing a team isn’t like renovating an office: you can’t just say ‘we’ll do one floor at a time’. Now, to make matters worse, Jim Ratcliffe is attacking migration again. Ratcliffe is part-owner of a team that relies on immigrants or their descendants from top to bottom, from the boardroom to the bars, from the stars to the stewards. He and his American co-owners employ a German director of recruitment who has just spent £150m on players born in Belgium, Cameroon and Brazil. Ratcliffe is a migrant himself, living in Monaco to avoid British taxes. His hypocrisy is breathtaking, and so is his approach to man-management. Is there anyone at United who can have a quiet word with him, and suggest that the way to inspire your foreign players is probably not to spout cheap xenophobia?
**We can always rely on the international break to come at the wrong time.** We’re left twiddling our thumbs and pinning our hopes on players who haven’t been playing. Carlos Baleba could shield the defence, as he brings more pace and bite than the other midfielders, though it would mean sacrificing either Kobbie Mainoo’s elegance or Youri Tielemans’ vision. Matthijs de Ligt, who travelled to Fulham, could soon be a first-choice centre-back again, as he was last autumn: he can start instead of Harry Maguire, to add mobility without subtracting nous, or alongside him, to stifle old-school strikers like Brobbey and Dominic Calvert-Lewin. And then there’s Amad, who could be the key to the attack. If he comes in on the right, with his hustle and bustle, the role of stand-in striker can go to the person who has played it best: Bryan Mbeumo, who is more of a fox in the box than Cunha. If Amad remains injured, Carrick can still move Mbeumo right away by giving Shea Lacey a first start in the league. His first senior start, against Brighton in the League Cup, brought a beautiful goal within ten minutes. Last season, when his job was to sort out the mess left by Amorim, Carrick brought the best out of the squad just by being steady and sensible and putting good players in their natural positions. This season, he’s going to have to be a bit bolder.
_Tim de Lisle is the editor of United Writing and a sportswriter for The Guardian. He’s been supporting United since the days when [their brightest star ended up playing for Fulham](https://www.unitedinfocus.com/throwbacks/george-bests-brief-spell-at-fulham-a-dream-debut-and-hundreds-of-cheering-man-utd-fans/)._