Ruben Amorim’s Manchester United suffered a fresh low as they lost 1-0 to Everton at Old Trafford, despite the visitors spending more than 75 minutes with 10 men after Idrissa Gueye was sent off for striking team-mate Michael Keane.
In extraordinary scenes early in the first half, Gueye and centre-back Keane argued and replays showed Gueye raise his hand to Keane’s face; Gueye apologised to team-mates at full-time. Rather than allowing United to take control, the incident coincided with Everton growing into the game, and they took the lead through Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall.
Dewsbury-Hall collected the ball on a solo run to the edge of the box and fired past Senne Lammens’ outstretched gloves into the net. United, who were missing Benjamin Sesko and Matheus Cunha through injury, failed to capitalise on their numerical advantage; their best first-half chance was a 30-yard Bruno Fernandes strike saved by Jordan Pickford.
United started the second half similarly disjointed. Half-time substitute Mason Mount put two chances wide and Bryan Mbeumo saw an effort saved by Pickford. Joshua Zirkzee, starting his first United game for 225 days, forced Pickford into two outstanding saves and later headed a Kobbie Mainoo cross wide, but United could not break Everton down.
Amorim stuck with his 3-4-2-1 formation throughout, prompting frustration from Sky Sports’ Gary Neville on co-commentary. “You have five at the back, why? They still don’t win the first ball or second ball. Embarrassing,” Neville said. “The subs have taken him down a cul-de-sac. There’s no agility or flexibility firstly from the coach, but also the players.”
More boos rang out at full-time as former United coach David Moyes recorded his first Old Trafford win as a visiting manager. For Amorim, the defeat underlined serious issues in the performance and mentality of his side.
Player ratings
Man Utd: Lammens (4); Yoro (5), De Ligt (5), Shaw (3); Mazraoui (4), Casemiro (3), Fernandes (4), Dorgu (4); Amad (4), Zirkzee (3), Mbeumo (5)
Subs: Mount (4), Dalot (4), Mainoo (4)
Everton: Pickford (9); Coleman (n/a), Tarkowski (8), Keane (8), Mykolenko (7); Gueye (1), Garner (7), Dewsbury-Hall (9); Ndiaye (8), Barry (8), Grealish (8)
Subs: O’Brien (7), Beto (n/a), Iroegbunam (n/a), McNel (n/a), Alcaraz (n/a)
Player of the Match: Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall
Amorim on the defeat to Sky Sports: “Frustration, disappointment with the way we played the game. They were the better team with 11 men. They defended really well with 10 men for 70 minutes. We deserved to lose. We didn’t play well, with the right intensity. We are not there, not even near the point that we should be to fight for the best positions. We have a lot to do. We have to be perfect to win games, we were not perfect to win games.”
On the red card, Amorim added: “Fighting is not a bad thing. Fighting doesn’t mean they don’t like each other. Fighting is if you lose the ball, I will fight you because we will suffer a goal. That was my feeling with that red card. I don’t agree with that sending off. We can fight with team-mates. I know it’s violent conduct, the referee explained it, I don’t agree with that. I hope my players, when they lose the ball, they fight each other. I hope they don’t get sent off, but that is a good feeling not a bad feeling.”
Gary Neville on The Gary Neville Podcast: “It’s complacency, and complacency will kill you. The minute that you think as a football player that you just have to turn up on that pitch and you’re Manchester United and you can play or any football club, you’re done. It just smelt of complacency. They weren’t at it from the beginning. That is a bad one for United. You can’t go from the fight that they showed in certain games to that. It just erodes confidence, it erodes trust. The fans booed collectively at the end. It was loud, and rightly so. That was a really poor performance. It’s almost as if you’ve gone sort of like two or three steps forward, everyone’s feeling a little bit better about themselves, and you’ve just gone back to the start again.”
David Moyes on the sending off: “If nothing happened, I don’t think anyone in the stadium would have been surprised. I thought the referee could have taken a bit longer to think about it. I got told that the rules of the game that if you slap your own player, you could be in trouble. But there’s another side to it: I like my players fighting each other, if someone didn’t do the right action. If you want that toughness and resilience to get a result, you want someone to act on it. I’m disappointed we get the sending off. But we’ve all been footballers, we get angry with our team-mates. He’s apologised for the sending off, he’s praised the players and thanked them for it and apologised for what happened.”
Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall: “Rollercoaster game. I’ll sleep well tonight, put it that way. So genuinely happy for the lads and how hard they worked. A fantastic performance of gritting away, getting a goal and keeping that spirit. So glad we got the three points. We started really well – the situation happened. It was a moment of madness, avoidable. But all I can say is Idrissa has apologised to us at full-time, said his piece and that’s all he can do. We move on from it. The reaction from us, was unbelievable. Top tier. We could have crumbled but if anything, it made us grow.”
What’s next
Man Utd and Everton both have upcoming Premier League fixtures to focus on as the season continues.