SERVICE!
With the possible exception of overtaking Roy Keane and gleefully unfurling your middle finger a split-second before realising it’s him, nothing in football tests nerve and moral fibre quite like a tough away fixture. Manchester United’s results against the top nine in the Premier League this season make for a grisly character reference: 0-4, 3-6, 1-3, 2-3, 0-7, 0-2. (Yes, sure, they won 2-1 away to 10th-placed Fulham, but that’s got nothing to do with the narrative we’re peddling here.) Six games, six defeats, 25 goals conceded and a general acceptance that United can’t handle football’s hotter kitchens. On Thursday night in Seville, they gave the most emphatic response to such slurs by folding just as miserably against the 13th-best team in Spain!
