Key players are out of form or on the bench and Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s tactical setup feels more hopeful than thought out
Football is a game that only occasionally follows the script. Before every big game everybody prognosticates, looks at the form and the history, considers the tactical match-ups and tries to read the way the historical wind is blowing. Even when the predictions are largely right in terms of the pattern of the game, the score doesn’t always follow. Which was what made Saturday’s one-sided Manchester derby so remarkable: it was utterly, dully predictable.
You didn’t have to be Paul Scholes, the toe-sucking seer of Salford, to see what was going to happen. Ole Gunnar Solskjær had United sit deep in the 3-5-2 shape that last week looked as though it might serve as a short-term fix, to keep crisis at bay for another couple of months. City, as they had against a far better-drilled
Chelsea side attempting a similar approach, would pick their way between the bollards, dominate the game and win. The level of comfort would not quite be matched by the scoreline because of the visitors’ weird inability to take their chances in certain games. And, lo, it came to pass.