Ibrahimovic achieves statistic of 19 Premier League starts, 13 Premier League goals, showing teenage team-mate how it is done against West Ham
Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s contribution was the garnish rather than the main course but compared with the kind of nourishment he had proposed for some onlookers earlier in the week, it still went down rather well. His had been a supporting part in a Manchester United performance that offered little more than fits and spurts before the game-changing introductions of Marcus Rashford and Juan Mata that terminally stretched West Ham United, but the 35-year-old Swede possesses a knack of having the last word at will. His first goal of 2017 showed once more that time’s passage means little when a showman is doing as he always has.
It is more of a surprise when Ibrahimovic does not raise the eyebrows but he still wrong-footed a few when, on the eve of this fixture, he announced a gift for malapropism. “Like always, I make them eat their balls” was his verdict on the way in which he has silenced any critics over the past five months and if that brought some rather awkward contortions to mind it was a reminder – were one needed – that the Swede has displayed some remarkable elasticity of his own.
Related: Slaven Bilic rails against red card for West Ham’s Sofiane Feghouli
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