When Manchester United’s backroom staff gather to pore over the carcass of defeat to Nottingham Forest, they will between them produce a lengthy list of imperfections to address.
Missed opportunities will bring shudders. An inability to defend set-pieces – or, indeed, a complete inability to defend generally – will curl the toes of even the most placid of coaches. But a group that probably runs to a dozen-or-so footballing mega-nerds might well miss is the very thing that Manchester United are, in fact, themselves missing.
