Manchester United had to beat Bayern Munich at Old Trafford on Tuesday night to stand any chance of keeping their Champions League dream for this season alive.
Unfortunately, United’s players did not appear to get the memo. On a night when they needed to roll up their sleeves in the hope of giving themselves a fighting chance of progressing to the knockout stages, they bowed out of the competition with a whimper. Mustering just one shot on target in a must-win fixture, United never looked capable of scoring.
They did not look as defensively suspect as they did three days earlier against Bournemouth but they looked just as toothless in attack. Though the Reds were up against a star-studded Bayern side and were without a series of household names due to injuries and illness, matchgoers would at the very least have expected a performance featuring more enthusiasm. United were bereft of ideas and Bayern barely had to break sweat to get the job done.
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It was far too comfortable for Thomas Tuchel’s side, who had been hammered 5-1 by Eintracht Frankfurt on the same afternoon United had been schooled by Bournemouth. One moment of quality decided the game and it was always going be the German outfit who would provide it.
Though the scoreline was not as harrowing as some United supporters feared pre-match, almost everyone was taken aback when Ten Hag said he was happy with his side’s showing, despite producing another powder-puff performance at home, in a game they had to win.
Ten Hag told TNT Sports: “Today, the performance was very good and I thought we didn’t deserve to lose. I think they showed enough effort out there, the team did very good. We were very good in the pressing, in the defensive organisation and we had many ball recoveries especially in the second half.
“But we didn’t take the benefits from that and we played against a strong side. Bayern are a good team and even when they’re not in the game, they have to just use one moment of individual class and that happened today.”
Though you cannot ignore the calibre of Bayern and the players they had on show, it felt United were not at the races. They could have played all night and they wouldn’t have scored. It was that kind of evening.
The fact Ten Hag thought it was a “very good” performance though attracts justified questioning. United, in the eyes of almost everyone who watched were not very good at all. They were flat at best.
United may not at the same level as Bayern but that does not excuse such an uninspiring showing. If that performance was deemed acceptable, the standards Ten Hag was supposed to have reinstalled at Old Trafford last season have been forgotten about. That was the point Jamie Carragher perfectly summarised in his post-match assessment.
“I think what happens is, because it has been so poor for Manchester United this season, you are playing one of the top teams in Europe and you are missing injured players, so I think it is almost a case of because you haven’t been beaten three or four nil, 1-0 actually feels okay,” Carragher told CBS Sports.
“They were in the game for about an hour, and there was about 60 or 70 minutes on the clock when Munich scored. He [Ten Hag] was probably watching the game thinking, ‘We’re still in this game’ and it is almost like a slight feel-good factor.
“But I think because they lost 3-0 to Bournemouth at the weekend, then playing one of the giants of European football and only losing 1-0, he is trying to take something from it to get to Sunday [vs Liverpool], because I am sure that will be the message tomorrow [Wednesday] when he sees the players.”
Carragher, who added that Ten Hag was ‘clutching at straws’, is right. The level of expectation at United has stooped so low in recent months that a 1-0 defeat is now deemed acceptable. Ten Hag is not the main problem at United, and everyone knows that.
But he is not blameless in their current rut. He is at risk of distancing himself from the high standards and demands he implemented with a positive outlook on such a flat showing even if he didn’t want to call his players out in public. Regardless, Carragher was correct.
Olivia Martin is a dedicated sports journalist based in the UK. With a passion for various athletic disciplines, she covers everything from major league championships to local sports events, delivering up-to-the-minute updates and in-depth analysis.
