Manchester United’s under-fire manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer already has a ready-made excuse if his team fail to beat Everton on Saturday.
Cristiano Ronaldo’s winner five minutes into stoppage time at home to Villarreal on Wednesday, eased the pressure on his Norwegian boss as a United side who had lost three out of their previous four fixtures – including back-to-back reversals at Old Trafford against West Ham United and Aston Villa plus a Champions League upset at Young Boys – came from behind to secure a 2-1 victory.
Despite splashing out big money this summer on Ronaldo plus other expensive acquisitions like Jadon Sancho and Raphael Varane, United have so far had a mixed start to the campaign.
Their early Saturday fixture with Everton (kick-off 12:30pm) has echoes of the meeting between the two clubs at Goodison Park last season when United also had a 60-hour turnaround from their 2-1 Champions League defeat in Turkey to Istanbul Basaksehir.
Back then Solskjaer blasted the television fixture schedulers by complaining to BT Sport: “We were set up to fail.
“I said to you before, I want to talk about the kick-off time.
“They set up the boys to fail. We’ve got Luke Shaw injured today because we’ve been to Turkey, we’ve played loads of games already this season, we've been to Turkey on Wednesday night, back in Thursday morning and we're playing Saturday in a lunchtime kick-off, it’s an absolute shambles.
“I can’t praise the boys enough for the character they've shown. Those boys deserve better than being thrown out here to fail.”
Sure enough, United got off to a sluggish start at Goodison with Bernard firing Everton in front on 19 minutes.
However, the visitors hit back to triumph 3-1 with a Bruno Fernandes brace (25, 32) and Edison Cavani sealing their victory in the last minute.
Having lost 4-0 to United in a pre-season friendly, Rafa Benitez will be hoping for a more spirited display more akin to the Blues’ visit to Old Trafford last season when a stoppage time goal from Dominic Calvert-Lewin secured a 3-3 draw.
In response to the complaints from managers like Solskjaer, BT Sport have agreed to move their usual Saturday, 12.30pm slot to 7.45pm in games that involve at least one team which played in a Champions League match the previous Wednesday but that doesn't come into effect until next season.
