Poor Ole. He must now be fearing for his job. No doubt the “five-minute fans” will want him out now that his unbeaten run has come to an end. They will want to replace him with….well….er….they probably don’t know because these are the kind of idiots who just want a manager out of their club without giving any particular thought as to who will replace him.
United actually played reasonably well against Arsenal and certainly didn’t deserve to lose in a game which was all about four shots at goal. Two of those shots came from the home team the first of which was from Granit Xhaka who had the advantage of being able to make the ball become invisible to goalkeepers. David De Gea has, no doubt, watched several replays of the goal and probably still hasn’t seen where the ball went.
The second shot was a penalty awarded to Arsenal as a reward for the degree of difficulty chosen by Alexandre Lacazette when diving to win it.
So both of these shots went in and gave the Gunners a fortunate and very undeserved three points.
The other two shots were from United players. Their first was an effort from Romelu Lukaku who was about two yards from goal. He proceeded to join the long list of strikers who has managed to hit the crossbar from this distance when the easier thing to do would have been to score.
Second up was Fred who was the unluckiest of the four when his placed shot from 22 yards out came back off the post.
So, had De Gea been able to see the ball when struck by Xhaka and had Jon Moss been able to recognise a blatant dive and had Lukaku been able to take the easier option and had Fred managed to steer his shot between the posts instead of against one of them, then the score could have been very different.
Much was made of the fact that David De Gea didn’t have a shot to save during the game but this, in truth, was inaccurate. He did have one shot to save, he just chose not to save it and the same could be argued about the penalty!
De Gea celebrates a goal…..but not against Arsenal!
Arsenal will now continue with the misguided belief that they will finish in the top four. They won’t simply because they are too inconsistent and will lose some of their remaining away games.
United have given themselves work to do as a win at The Emirates would have put some distance between themselves and Chelsea and Arsenal. This is now not the case and they will have to win most of their remaining games whilst hoping the rest lose some of theirs which, of course, they will.
The rest…..
Manchester City and Liverpool both won meaning they are still very firm favourites for the top two places but in which order?
Liverpool are the team showing signs of inconsistency and this could well cost them the title.
Tottenham Hotspur yet again managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory whilst Chelsea had Eden Hazard to thank for a 91st minute equaliser at home to Wolves. Maybe these two will miss out on the top four, who knows?
Mauricio Pochettino needs some reassurances from Daniel Levy about next season although his options, should he choose to leave Spurs, appear to have diminished considerably with Zinedine Zidane back at Real Madrid and Ole Gunnar Solskjær expected to be confirmed at Old Trafford.
The other Maurizio seems to expect that he will still be at Stamford Bridge next season despite having fallen out with the players á la José Mourinho and despite possibly finishing outside of the top four á la Antonio Conte, both of whom were sacked for these misdemeanours.
The Sarri train will still be puffing into Stamford Bridge next season….if Maurizio has his way
So even if the top two places have already been decided the race for the next two is still very interesting.
WHY SAY ANYTHING? 