Southampton 2-2 Manchester United: Four Things We Learned

Manchester United continue their poor form with another Premier League draw, as they were unable to climb back from another terrible start, splitting points with Southampton at the St Mary’s Stadium, 2-2.

In a hectic first half when plenty of things happened, Man United found themselves trailing by two goals after just 20 minutes of play. Both Stuart Armstrong’s and Cedric Soares’ goals were beautiful, especially the free-kick from the latter. However, as many times this season when they were falling behind, Man United managed to claw back into the game, through Romelu Lukaku and Ander Herrera goals.

Marcus Rashford set both goals, but it was not enough for anything more than a point, as Man United had just one shot on target in the entire second half, against a team with just one win in the league three months ago.

Matic And McTominay Are Not Centre-Back Solutions

Jose Mourinho opted this time for a 3-5-2 formation with Lukaku and Rashford up top, but it was again a poor choice of putting Scott McTominay and Nemanja Matic as two centre-backs to play alongside Phil Jones. It was a bad mix, as very soon became apparent the Scot and the Serb are simply not good enough to play in an unnatural position.

Matic lost his player for the first goal and the way Michael Obafemi breezed through United’s defence prior to the goal was particularly painful to watch.

A New Starting Lineup For Every Match Is Not Good Right Now

Jose Mourinho is tinkering with the starting lineup too much these days. It seems like there is a radically different starting XI for every match and just by comparing the games against Palace, Young Boys and Southampton, that is obvious. Some might say it is for rotation, but at this moment there is not going to be true tiredness amongst the players.

After all, Man United are not in situation to worry about that right now. They need to start winning matches and putting consistent performances. The tinkering is not helpful at this time.

Pogba Summarizes Himself In The Mix Of The Good And The Bad

There was that one tweet with a video showing Paul Pogba making an incredibly well balanced, soft first touch, making a few spins in the centre of the park and then inexplicably losing the ball without touching it at all. If that sounded confusing, then that is a good depiction of Paul Pogba right now. He confuses people and, sometimes, he confuses himself. This performance was another one of those where for every good thing he does, there is at least one bad move.

Armstrong Enjoys The Occasion

Stuart Armstrong really enjoyed this match. The scorer of the opening goal seemed very confident and especially after getting onto scoresheet. His finish to get past David De Gea was precise, strong enough and still well measured to hit the net just by De Gea’s right-hand post. He also had a couple of nice dribbles and overall looked very comfortable on the pitch. Playing against Man United these days does that to opposing players.

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