The Manchester United manager’s talk of luck held no weight on a day when his clumsily assembled attack were again lifeless
The end was chaotic, Newcastle camped in their box with every block and clearance being roared to the rafters, but the tension of that final minute of injury time, and the similarly desperate scramble at around 80 minutes, should not allow the narrative to take hold that Manchester United were unlucky to lose. Rather they were desperately drab, short of inspiration, their forward line a strange bodge job of sparkly parts that do not really go together.
You dread to think what Jorge Valdano would have made of it. It was a battle between Rafa Benítez and José Mourinho, when in charge of Liverpool and Chelsea in the semi-final of the 2007 Champions League, that the former Argentina striker infamously likened to “a shit hanging from a stick”, insisting it was not art, no matter how august or appreciative the gallery in which it was placed.
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