by The Danakil Depression is a plane about 125 miles long and 35 miles wide located at the northern end of the Afar Triangle in Ethiopia. Based on the divergence of three tectonic plates in the Horn of Africa, it is located 410 feet below sea level and is the hottest place on earth due to year-round temperatures. Although the 3.2-million-year-old fossil of Lucy, Australopithecus afarensis, was discovered there in 1974, suggesting it was the cradle of humanity, the salt lakes are now widely considered to be the deadliest place on earth. world.
Or at least they were until Saturday when further evidence emerged to suggest that Manchester United is the bleakest place on earth, the most devoid of creativity and imagination and hope and joy. There are also claim paleoanthropologists, there is fossil evidence of ancient life, even glory, although if extremophilic microbes are rare, it is only in the kitchens.
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United have now gone four games without a goal for the first time since the autumn of 1992. If the drought continues against Aston Villa on Boxing Day, they will have scored five fewer than the club’s hygiene rating. They have won one of their last seven. The last time they lost this many games before Christmas was 1931. But it’s not just about results and statistics; it’s about how stubborn, how tired, how unmotivated they are. Alejandro Garnacho made a couple of attempts straight at Alphonse Areola and worked a couple of crossing opportunities, and Kobbie Mainoo hit a low grubber that shoveled the keeper wide – and that was it.
United’s season this season has not been great, it has been bad – something that has become quite familiar over the past decade. It is that they are bad in two completely different ways. In Europe – at least before the home win against Bayern which was the second game of this run of four without a goal – they were hysterical, scoring hatfuls, conceding even more, a raging, rambunctious rollercoaster of raucousness; at home, they have just been dull, ferris wheel faded frustration. No side in the top three quarters of the table has scored fewer goals than them.
But the question of what United’s Champions League group was like, and their league form like this, was just one of a number raised by this game. How did Erik ten Hag’s Ajax play football like that, when his United looks like this? (The reason for the lesser mystery is the individual form of almost every member of that side since: no one has reached the heights that might have been expected of them; although it is at least certain that the first which came to an end in the middle. the great debilitator that is Old Trafford, Donny van de Beek, suffered the most precipitous decline).
How could the West Ham bench cost around £40m more than the United bench? How could a team that started the season with a pair of centre-backs who had won the previous two World Cups face a 35-year-old they offloaded five years ago in Jonny Evans and 18 year old player? former France under-16 international making his first team debut in Willy Kambwala? How is it possible that Jarrod Bowen has scored more this season than United’s entire starting XI here? What on earth happened to Marcus Rashford? How could anyone think Antony is worth £82m? How long before Mainoo is dragged down to the same optimistic level as the rest, as Rasmus Højlund clearly was? And how long can this go on?
Even West Ham didn’t have to be very good to beat them. When André Onana gave Bowen a destination, he felt like he was coming across a withered bush in the desert: impenetrable anywhere else, but unexpectedly amazing here. The first goal also came from a strange, because Onana, for once, did not suffer one of his inappropriate dematerialization when he faced one on one; unfortunately for him this time his continued performance only deflected the ball back to Bowen from where it disappeared into the net. Unlucky perhaps, but United have become an unlucky team.
Ten Hag spoke about the importance of scoring the first goal and how many goalscorers he has in the side. But there is such an all-encompassing lack of confidence, energy, imagination, it’s hard to see where that can come from. The end of a managerial game is hopeless, if replacing the manager is what clubs do when their form is this bad. Ten Hag, he believes, is about to become yet another victim of United’s malaise.
There is something wonderful in the desolation of the Danakil, in the volcanoes, the strange green and yellow of the landscape. If there is anything similar about United, just wonder how bad this can get.
