HERE WITH THE VIBES
While their noisy neighbours continued their progress through Big Cup’s group stage with a routine slap-down of Young Boys that earned them a place in the knockout stages with two games to spare, the players of Manchester United were cloistered in a Copenhagen hotel before their game against the Danish champions. While Manchester City, the reigning champions, are motoring through Group G as smoothly as a Red Bull race car negotiating a particularly tricky hairpin, United’s progress has looked more like that of a clown car clunking and spluttering its way around the Big Top. They lost their opening game against Bayern Munich by the odd goal of seven and their second by the odd goal of five against Galatasaray before arresting their poor by scraping past Copenhagen at Old Trafford thanks to some late goalkeeping heroics from André Onana.
Hailed as a potential turning point in what had, until then, been a horror start to the season, the steering wheel promptly came off in Erik ten Hag’s hands and the axles snapped as United got tonked 3-0 at home in each of their next two games. However, they will surf into this evening’s match at the Parken Stadium on the kind of tidal wave of confidence only a last-gasp winner at the end of yet another massively underwhelming domestic performance against extremely middling opposition can generate. “I’m happy with the points we got so far because we didn’t even play well but we are not too far away and we are in a position where we can compete for everything,” said Ten Hag in his pre-match pow-wow. “We want to play better and that is our target. It starts with good organisation in and out of possession and that last point is absolutely what we have now, we have such a good vibe and spirit.”
While it is almost certainly only a matter of time before some tactics boffin comes up with a foolproof decimal metric for measuring “vibes” and “team spirit”, for now they remain tricky to pin down. Given United’s appalling start to the season, the increasingly weird shunning of Jadon Sancho and the recent public dressing-down to which Marcus Rashford was subjected for celebrating his birthday on the evening of a defeat instead of staying indoors, donning sackcloth and flaying himself with a cricket bat wrapped in barbed wire, it is difficult to believe the Dutchman’s claims that his side’s xV and xTS are incredibly high. In a further blow to Ten Hag’s long-term employment prospects, he has revealed that United will be without Lisandro Martínez and Casemiro until Christmas, even if the latter’s absence may prove more of a help than a hindrance given his conspicuous drop-off in form compared to last year.
United can expect a hostile reception at Parken, which Copenhagen boss Jacob Neestrup claims will be a raucous bear-pit compared to the spooky silence in which his team were beaten a fortnight ago. “I would say with all the respect I felt when I stepped into Old Trafford, then I felt the historical atmosphere,” he said. “But you can’t compare Old Trafford with Parken because the intensity is times 100 in terms of what we played in two weeks ago. This is a standard that, for me, is way above the Premier League to be honest.” In such a hostile environment, it is not just on the pitch that those travelling in hope of a United win may struggle to make their presence felt.
LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE
Join Scott Murray at 8pm GMT for updates on Copenhagen 1-1 Manchester United in Big Cup, while Will Unwin will be on hand at the same time for Arsenal 2-1 Sevilla.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“We have to talk loudly. If you have a problem and you put it in your drawer, the problem is in the drawer and it’s going to stink at some point. If you have a problem, let’s talk about it, try to improve it. That’s what we are trying to do. Nothing else” – Mikel Arteta is still flapping his gums on the subject of officials and also reveals that he takes hygiene around the home seriously.
FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
Shall we just hand Big Cup to Manchester City and save the planet by preventing all that carbon footprint?” – Krishna Moorthy.
‘If we go down to five men we will have a go.’ I don’t want to diminish Big Ange’s enthusiasm (yesterday’s Football Daily) but the game would have been abandoned if there were fewer than seven Spurs players still on the pitch. Maybe it is not too late for him to read the FA rules” – Nigel Sanders (and 1,056 others).
May I be the first to congratulate John Aldridge on his good manners in removing his trainers before putting his feet up on that beautiful table (yesterday‘s Memory Lane, full email edition). That must be very occasional behaviour among pro footballers” – John Lawton.
Re: Andrew Kluth (yesterday’s Football Daily letters) – I don’t see that there is any contradiction in standing in front of a back-garden swimming pool. From a photographic perspective, surely ‘in front of’ simply means nearer the camera. ‘Back-garden’ defines a location relative to the house. It’s not as if it were a quantum physics pantomime (given the rapidly approaching time of year) in which the audience could call: ‘He’s behind you! And in front of you!’ at the same time” – Ken Muir.
A collector’s piece of a substitution by Young Boys in their match at the Etihad last night, Ulisses Garcia being replaced by Noah Persson, a rare example of an Iliad hero losing out to an Old Testament floating zookeeper” – John Addison.
Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s letter o’ the day winner is … Ken Muir (for having our back), who gets a copy of Tinseltown: Hollywood and the Beautiful Game – a Match Made in Wrexham. You can buy a copy here.
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