The meeting of the two Uniteds at St. James’ Park provided the Manchester one with an opportunity to strengthen their hold on second place while the one from Newcastle was looking to pull away from the bottom three.
The way the game went, an outsider would have been hard pressed to spot which was which and Newcastle ended the match as deserved winners.
Manchester United, in truth, were pretty woeful and if this defence is one of the best in the Premier League it must be because the opposition this season have all been short-sighted.
In past seasons, David De Gea has masked the defensive deficiencies by being named player of the year due to his ability to make his team mates look a lot better than they are.
For example, Antonio Valencia cannot defend. We are sick of repeating ourselves on this subject! On the two big occasions when he needed to make a tackle he gave away a free-kick. The first one was just a bad tackle, the second one could have seen him sent off.
Ashley Young cannot defend. We are sick of repeating ourselves on this subject as well! After running round in circles in the left back position, we then lost count of how many times he gave the ball away.
Chris Smalling – A player we never considered to be United quality when they bought him and he has just got worse
Chris Smalling not only cannot defend but is a liability and it is beyond belief how he keeps getting selected for this team.
Newcastle should have been given a penalty when he committed an obvious foul on Dwight Gayle, but they were unfortunate when the referee turned out to be the only person “watching” who didn’t see it!
On the one occasion Manchester United did have the ball in the net it was disallowed. Why? Because Smalling, as is ALWAYS the case, can’t keep his hands to himself and has to have them all over his opponent.
Matt Ritchie’s winning goal for Newcastle came from a free-kick given away by guess who? Correct, Smalling, whose offence was to DIVE! Not a dive to try and win a penalty but a DIVE IN HIS OWN HALF! That is a measure of the stupidity of the man!
Phil Jones is a Jekyll and Hyde type of character. He will put his body on the line and defend with his life when necessary but, there are times, when he is very rash, mis-times tackles and plays his team into trouble.
So that seems to be Mourinho’s favoured back four at present: two old wingers who can’t defend, a centre back who wouldn’t look out of place in the 1st or 2nd division but looks miles out of place here, and a headless chicken who can be decent when his head is on!
The midfield should be good with the likes of Pogba, Matić, Mata, McTominay, Lingard, Fellaini and Herrera to choose from but, even with the first five all playing some part in this game, they created absolutely nothing.
Anthony Martial – Should have scored at least one!
Having said that, Anthony Martial should have scored at least one from the chances he had, one created by Lukaku and another by defensive rebounds which actually resulted in two more.
It wasn’t to be United’s day and, as Mourinho pointed out afterwards, Newcastle fought for everything. He seemed to conveniently forget that Newcastle, at the start of the day, were in the bottom three while his own team were second. This alone proves that there should have been a gulf in class between the teams.
Manchester United were just nowhere near good enough to exploit their supposed superiority and so attention turned to St. Marys where Southampton, now in the bottom three, were facing Liverpool who would go third with a win and only two points behind United.
Even Chelsea, who everybody say are having a bad season, can move to within three points of United by beating West Brom at home on Monday night.
Manchester United, of course, had handed both of them a massive confidence boost by losing at Newcastle so it was unlikely that they would fail to take advantage of this.
And so to Southampton…..
Mo Salah – Grabbed Liverpool’s second against Southampton
Liverpool took an early lead after the Southampton defence failed to do what the Newcastle defence did all game, which was defend. Their carelessness in failing to clear an innocuous through-ball left Roberto Firmino unmarked to sidefoot the first goal past Forster.
Southampton then showed a bit of spirit with a mini-fightback during which they threatened the Liverpool goal on a couple of occasions until the inevitable happened
Just before half-time Mo Salah added a second for the visitors and that was really that.
The second half was a little of an anti-climax after what was, even if only for a brief period, a competitive first half.
So, as expected, Liverpool are now only two points behind United and the major difference between the two teams is that Liverpool are playing well, United aren’t!
WHY SAY ANYTHING? 
Weeks like this really make u wonder if managers do in fact know more about players or tactics or just football in general, than the fans do. There was once a few weeks during lvg’s first year when smalling looked almost good enough but what has he done since to justify his place or even his salary?? Are fans irritated with their managers choices supposed to think we know less and therefore our assessment of the players is wrong? Is there anyone anywhere who thinks this is the best man utd can do?? I don’t!
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