For about a decade at Manchester United there have been too many organizational resets, false dawns, and moments of humiliation to count. Grab any slice of results from this era and you can tell pretty much whatever story you want about this club. Hey, United might be turning a corner! Wow, United sure is stuck in the mud. Jeez, this is the most embarrassing team in all of professional sports.
Monday's home game against Everton once again booted United from a modest peak and down into the valley of anguish. The match marked manager Ruben Amorim's one-year anniversary with the club, and the Red Devils came into it riding what can be considered a nice wave of results in the context of Amorim's dour and depressing tenure. Three straight wins against Sunderland, Liverpool, and Brighton were followed by back-to-back draws against Nottingham Forest and Tottenham, and a win over Everton would have put United level on points with fourth-place Aston Villa.
The absence of Matheus Cunha from the forward line put a bit of damper on United's chances, but Everton got to work quickly making sure that the game was there for United's taking. Just 13 minutes into the game, Everton midfielder Idrissa Gueye was shown a red card and banished from the field. It wasn't a horror tackle on an opponent that got Gueye sent off, but rather his decision to haul off and slap his own teammate, Michael Keane, right in the face.
If any team should have been in a wobbly emotional state at that point in the game, it's the one that just went down to 10 men after watching two of their most reliable veterans completely lose their shit on one another. But for the rest of the first half it was United that looked tentative and confused, and in the 29th minute Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall made them pay for it with a sweet little goal:
And that was pretty much that. United spent the second half playing with more urgency, forcing a handful of nice saves out of Jordan Pickford, but it never felt like Everton was in that much danger. United just kept doing what they always seem to do—spraying passes five yards wide of their target, shooting the ball over the crossbar, and booming crosses into nothing but empty space.
Amorim, having just watched his team fail to score a goal in 80-plus minutes against a 10-man opponent, was left with no other option after the game than to imply that Everton were actually boosted by Gueye's slap. "Fighting is not a bad thing," he said. "I hope my players, when they lose the ball, they fight each other." Everton manager David Moyes, gifted with an opportunity to put whatever spin he wanted on Gueye's meltdown, couldn't help but agree with Amorim: "I quite like my players fighting each other."
So there you go Ruben, the path forward is clear. At the start of your next game, order Casemiro to march up to Bruno Fernandes and punch him right in the nose. You can still turn this thing around.
