You’ve got to hand it to the reliably prolific pain-content generator that is Manchester United. Even at the end of a performance that was, if nothing else, a perfect example of empty and bloodless systems football, 90 minutes that felt like watching a robot with a cold go for a walk, this thing can still offer you stories, mini-arcs, narrative Easter eggs.
The only shame is we will have to wait another six months, April at Stamford Bridge, to see if Bruno Fernandes can complete the perfect hat-trick of weirdly missed west London penalties.
At Fulham a month ago Fernandes became very angry after a minor collision with the referee, then whumped the ball into the crowd. Four miles west of Craven Cottage, with Manchester United 2-1 down to an energetic Brentford, there was a more nuanced take on the delayed Bruno west London spot-kick fluff plot device.
This time he was subjected to an interlude of mental disintegration by the video assistant referee, who took three minutes to decide Nathan Collins had not, repeat not, impeded a goalscoring opportunity by pulling back Bryan Mbeumo eight yards from goal with the ball heading his way. Enough for an obvious penalty. Not enough to qualify as a goalscoring opportunity. Maybe Mbeumo should sue for defamation.
Probably there was some really good logic behind this, shorthand for four hyped-up guys babbling jargon at each other in a sweaty room. It was process. It was an application of the guidelines. It was also just nonsense.
In the middle of this Bruno was also nudged a little by Keith Andrews, who made a double substitution that stretched out the wait. A mid-penalty substitution. Ever seen it before? All this time Bruno held the ball, tried to look centred, calm, earthed, while invisible non-football happened. The kick was weak, but also well saved.
And for United the game never came back from there, the only real tension the amazing lengths Ruben Amorim was willing to go to in order to preserve intact his laughably totalitarian “system”, like a juggler whirling around a bowling ball, a sword and a piece of sponge cake. Behold my miraculously ineffective 3-4-2-1, now available with six midfielders, a pigeon, a sandwich and Jim Leighton at wingback.
Nathan Collins was behind Bryan Mbeumo and pulled him back. Craig Pawson awarded a penalty but Collins was only booked. The challenge was looked at by the video assistant referee but he did not recommend a review.
Law 12 says:
Where a player commits an offence against an opponent within their own penalty area which denies an opponent an obvious goal-scoring opportunity and the referee awards a penalty kick, the offender is cautioned if the offence was an attempt to play the ball or a challenge for the ball; in all other circumstances (e.g. holding, pulling, pushing, no possibility to play the ball etc.), the offending player must be sent off.
It continues:
The following must be considered:
distance between the offence and the goal
general direction of the play
likelihood of keeping or gaining control of the ball
The Premier League match centre said on social media that Mbeumo was deemed not to be in control of the ball.
After the game Amorim blamed his team’s wretched performance on the players. Also on the referee. Also on Brentford for playing an aggressive game, dammit. The reality is this: at any normal club unscarred by other recent sackings, Amorim would now lose his job.
The prize at the Gtech was the hilariously abject prospect of back-to-back league wins for the first time under a manager who has been there for almost a year. In that time Amorim has achieved only one thing. A team that seemed previously to be bad for diffuse macro reasons of culture and ghosts in the walls are now bad in a highly specific Amorim-shaped way.
He has at the very least built a team in his own image. And yes, that image is reliably flawed, a pencil sketch from a textbook placed over ragged, complex human life by a manager who advertises to his opponent exactly what he’s going to do and then seems shocked each week to find himself getting mugged.
But there was at least a first here. This might sound harsh. But even the missed penalty is arguably Amorim’s fault. At the very least the manager deserved a miss-assist. What position is Fernandes playing in these days? Deep pivot, arguably, sentenced to that role as he’s the only person at the club still in favour with the boss who can play on the half turn.
In the process new patterns are being run. The assists and goals from open play have dried up. Here he is in a tight game stepping up to take a vital penalty, fried and rejigged, un-Brunoed, and looking for the first time anything other than totally relaxed. What do we expect in this scenario? Business as usual?
Another slow start also seemed to baffle Amorim, to the extent he again blamed Brentford for this afterwards. It is obvious watching this team why they start badly. The players begin each game looking like they’re in a state of buffering, regurgitating information, remembering patterns and shapes, unable to engage emotionally with the game or with what their opponents are doing.
You can feel this anti-energy flowing from a manager who came into Old Trafford all smiles and swagger and elite menswear, like a handsome sexy pirate; but who now spends every game clenching and squatting and walking in small circles, the look of a man trying very hard not to shit himself. Which, in effect, he is.
Here from the first minute he was waving his arms, shouting, exasperated even with his team in possession at some detail of spacing or bunching. Is it helping? Would this help anyone to do anything of any kind at any level?
There was a telling moment 2-0 down with 20 minutes gone and with United being marched around the pitch in a headlock, when Amorim’s players urgently lined up for the restart, all 10 of them to the left hand side. Don’t worry about the utterly bloodless performance. We still have an obscure but well-worked set piece restart for you.
And as ever it’s the system, stupid. It’s the stupid system. Let us take these oddly sourced parts, a fish finger, four walnuts, Casemiro, and bake them into a workable meal, but only, and I will not compromise on this, if I can do it in the shape of a bicycle. That is my one, unshakable principle. And here every player in the team underperformed or looked confused.
A long pass was all it took to create the first Brentford goal. Igor Thiago’s finish was astonishing, perhaps for him too. But what kind of manager asks Harry Maguire to play a high line, to defend large spaces, and is then surprised when this doesn’t work? Hey, what’s a guy got to do to get a payoff around here?
The wingbacks were dreadful. Patrick Dorgu is good at running, but it’s more like he’s doing a cross-country quite near some other people playing football. Benjamin Sesko scored an opportunist goal. The penalty miss came and went. And Brentford were always, always winning this game.
The one certainty at the end of an abject 3-1 defeat is that nothing will shift here. Ruben-ball will be back next week, somehow. Stay tuned for more of exactly the same.
