Man Utd’s £207m strike force pays dividends with goal to echo glory years
Everton 0-1 Manchester United
For Manchester United this was not just a win. It was, at last, an affirmation of their decision to go all in and overhaul their forward line last summer. All three of their recruits combined to score the kind of glorious counter-attacking goal that has been United’s trademark of old. A trademark that had appeared to belong to a distant past.
Heck, Wayne Rooney was in the crowd and there – dare it be said – were even shades of him, Cristiano Ronaldo and Carlos Tevez as Matheus Cunha, Bryan Mbeumo and Benjamin Sesko combined to devastating effect from one end of the pitch to the other in a few seconds to settle it. Sesko started and finished it.
That is not to say that the current United front three remotely compare to that previous trio – even if they cost £207m to recruit – but there was an echo and it proved enough to gain the hard-fought, almost attritional win over a rugged Everton.
It lifted United three points clear in fourth place and that hope of Champions League football next season is beginning to gain real foundation.
The absence of any other football, apart from the league, is not what United want but it is giving them a clear run at finishing as high as they can and giving Michael Carrick more time on the training pitch. He must – and is – taking advantage of that.
This is what United should be doing, by the way, especially when they can bring a £74m centre-forward off the bench.
What else is starting to crystalise? It was hardly a stellar performance, but the fact is Carrick has achieved five victories and a draw from six Premier League games. That makes United the form team and surely enhances his chances of getting the head coach’s job.
And the goal? Under Carrick, United have already registered some fine strikes, often countering rapidly as against Manchester City – in his first game – and away to Arsenal. But this one involved the three forwards.
Sesko once again started among the replacements and while it must be a frustration, he brushed it aside and got his goal 13 minutes after coming on – just as it appeared the game was petering out into a draw that would have raised questions about whether Carrick’s reign was losing momentum.
For Sesko, it is six goals in seven appearances. He will not like the super-sub tag, and is surely due a start, but there is a rich tradition of that role at United and, crucially, the 22-year-old is scoring goals that are winning points. Not the third in a 3-0 victory.
Three points here, after salvaging a late point against West Ham United, three points against Fulham before that with another superb last-gasp goal and two in the 2-2 draw against Burnley.
That is a six-point swing in favour of Sesko and without his recent contributions, United would be down in seventh.
It is not just the goals but the quality of them. This was relatively simple but only because he made it look that way. Everton had a corner – and how difficult they made the fight-ball from those set-pieces – but Sesko laid possession off to Cunha on United’s left and he swept it crossfield to find Mbeumo. He ran on and delivered a square pass for Sesko to sidefoot unerringly beyond Jordan Pickford. “Ruthless finish that sums up where he is at,” Carrick said.
In that moment, all three United players had that killer instinct and, above all, Sesko, who showed the pace and desire to leave Everton captain James Tarkowski in his wake to earn the time and space to steady himself – as the best goal-scorers do – before beating Pickford.
With that, the Carrick song struck up among the United fans as well it might. He is undeniably building a body of evidence which, if it does not convince the United hierarchy to appoint him on a permanent basis, will attract other clubs. Maybe even another he used to play for in Tottenham Hotspur? Carrick will be in demand.
It was not just a good night for those three United forwards, with Sesko replacing Amad Diallo, but also for goalkeeper Senne Lammens who brushed aside a mistake inside the first five seconds, when he cannoned a clearance against Thierno Barry, to produce another assured performance. “He was bloody brilliant,” Everton manager David Moyes lamented.
It was not just an excellent tip-over to deny Michael Keane’s powerful drive that caught the eye but also the way in which he dealt with Everton’s physical barrage from corners.
It was another big tick for United’s recruitment department. Rightly maligned for so many of the players they signed in recent years, the big four quartet from last summer – not cheap – are proving to be the real deal.
For United, it was the reverse scoreline from the 1-0 loss to 10-man Everton last November, which proved to be one more low point, maybe the lowest in the league, under Ruben Amorim. Back then, only Mbeumo, of the three attackers, played and his only contribution of note was to be yellow-carded. United have come a long way since.
Chances were at a premium and Carrick was astute enough to realise one goal would be enough and so, after scoring, he withdrew Mbeumo for another defender in Noussair Mazraoui, knowing the bombardment that would follow. As satisfying for him as the goal will be how United saw it out.
[Source: Daily Telegraph]
