In quite the boon for The Best League In The World brigade, the 13th-best Premier League team did indeed appear to be “way better” than the third-best team in Ligue 1. Full credit to Andre Onana for his prescience, but that’s all the credit he’s due. His one-man quest to redress the balance and add fuel to the “worst goalkeeper in Manchester United history” fire was almost too respectful.
He has to save the first one. The free-kick was almost perfect, delivered by Thiago Almada into the corridor that breeds uncertainty in a goalkeeper. Any touch by a Lyon player would have made it very difficult for Onana, but there was none. And while even the threat of a touch can sometimes make an error excusable, the ball ends up directly in front of Onana’s eyes, before an exaggerated and unnecessary flourish of his arms failed to push the ball wide of the post.
We have more sympathy for the second. Georges Mikautadze hit his shot very, very hard and while softer hands would have been welcome, there aren’t many goalkeepers who would have dealt comfortably with it.
The TV director should have been sacked on the spot for failing to cut to Nemanja Matic on the Lyon bench in either instance, in one of a number of questionable production calls which included focusing on Mason Mount after a horrible Rasmus Hojlund shank as if the perennially injured midfielder is the answer to their goalscoring woes. In fairness, we doubt they had the option of Liam Delap, Victor Osimhen or Viktor Gyokeres, though as it turns out, Joshua Zirkzee was the guy to pan to.
READ MORE: Liam Delap transfer: One reason every Premier League club will think they can win race to sign him
Robbie Savage summed Hojlund’s miss up by dismissively insisting “he’s just got to do better” and he could have made the same claim on several other occasions during the striker’s latest failure in this unceasing run of them to make a mockery of his £64m price tag and have us wondering what Matic’s take is on his standing among all-time Manchester United strikers. We can’t remember a worse United striker who played anywhere near as regularly as Hojlund does.
At one point he got the ball in space, bumbled at the Lyon defence with the ball barely under control and took a shot having made no space for one which rolled tamely through to the goalkeeper. Shortly afterwards he made a run into the channel and somehow mishit a five-yard pass out of play.
MORE MAN UTD COVERAGE ON F365…
👉 Amorim picks out Man Utd pair who must ‘improve’ as returning star not a ‘full player’
👉 Man Utd: Keane dismisses ‘not enough’ Europa as Neville disagrees with ‘big but’ given as ‘reason’
👉 Man Utd ‘willing’ to shatter record transfer with Real Madrid ‘tired’ of superstar and ‘will sell’
Hojlund’s confidence is entirely shot and he doesn’t even have the out-of-position excuse of the Chelsea star who flopped in the Conference League on Thursday evening. Gyokeres scored a million goals playing in exactly this system under Ruben Amorim at Sporting, and if Hojlund isn’t a Gyokeres-like striker then what is he?
It was left to Leny Yoro and then Zirkzee to show Hojlund how it’s done. Yoro expertly flicked Manuel Ugarte’s volley past Lucas Perri with his head in the last action of the first half, before Zirkzee nodded in Fernandes’ beautiful cross to give United a well-deserved lead in the 88th minute.
Amorim said ahead of this game that his side were showing “progress” towards understanding what he wants from them and their specific roles in his system. And this may well have been as close as we’ve seen United playing to that Amorim ideal.
Patrick Dorgu had his best game since his £25m move in January, raiding down the left and delivering several dangerous crosses. Ugarte and Casemiro were combative but also looked to be progressive in their passing. Bruno Fernandes was excellent again without it being His Show again thanks to Alejandro Garnacho, who found space and was positive if not all that productive once again, Mason Mount, whose 20-minute cameo showed why Amorim is convinced he’s perfect for one of the inverted winger roles, and Zirkzee, who put the him or Hojlund debate to bed with a goal and actual stuff strikers do besides.
We’re all for slamming United when they’re rubbish, and have done incessantly over the last year, but Paul Scholes’ glum reaction to this game in the TNT Sports studio was weird. This was pretty good.
Rayan Cherki’s late, late dink over Onana was a blow, but Amorim and United should still be very confident of getting through to the semi-final, because they are better (maybe not “way better”) than Lyon on the evidence of this game and if it weren’t for the man who made that bolshy claim which came back to bite him in spectacular fashion, they would already have one foot in the next round.
