In quite the boon for The Best League In The World brigade, the 13th-best Premier League team did indeed appear to be âway betterâ than the third-best team in Ligue 1. Full credit to Andre Onana for his prescience, but thatâs all the credit heâs due. His one-man quest to redress the balance and add fuel to the âworst goalkeeper in Manchester United historyâ fire was almost too respectful.
He has to save the first one. The free-kick was almost perfect, delivered by Thiago Almada into the corridor that breeds uncertainty in a goalkeeper. Any touch by a Lyon player would have made it very difficult for Onana, but there was none. And while even the threat of a touch can sometimes make an error excusable, the ball ends up directly in front of Onanaâs eyes, before an exaggerated and unnecessary flourish of his arms failed to push the ball wide of the post.
We have more sympathy for the second. Georges Mikautadze hit his shot very, very hard and while softer hands would have been welcome, there arenât many goalkeepers who would have dealt comfortably with it.
The TV director should have been sacked on the spot for failing to cut to Nemanja Matic on the Lyon bench in either instance, in one of a number of questionable production calls which included focusing on Mason Mount after a horrible Rasmus Hojlund shank as if the perennially injured midfielder is the answer to their goalscoring woes. In fairness, we doubt they had the option of Liam Delap, Victor Osimhen or Viktor Gyokeres, though as it turns out, Joshua Zirkzee was the guy to pan to.
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Robbie Savage summed Hojlundâs miss up by dismissively insisting âheâs just got to do betterâ and he could have made the same claim on several other occasions during the strikerâs latest failure in this unceasing run of them to make a mockery of his ÂŁ64m price tag and have us wondering what Maticâs take is on his standing among all-time Manchester United strikers. We canât remember a worse United striker who played anywhere near as regularly as Hojlund does.
At one point he got the ball in space, bumbled at the Lyon defence with the ball barely under control and took a shot having made no space for one which rolled tamely through to the goalkeeper. Shortly afterwards he made a run into the channel and somehow mishit a five-yard pass out of play.
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Hojlundâs confidence is entirely shot and he doesnât even have the out-of-position excuse of the Chelsea star who flopped in the Conference League on Thursday evening. Gyokeres scored a million goals playing in exactly this system under Ruben Amorim at Sporting, and if Hojlund isnât a Gyokeres-like striker then what is he?
It was left to Leny Yoro and then Zirkzee to show Hojlund how itâs done. Yoro expertly flicked Manuel Ugarteâs volley past Lucas Perri with his head in the last action of the first half, before Zirkzee nodded in Fernandesâ beautiful cross to give United a well-deserved lead in the 88th minute.
Amorim said ahead of this game that his side were showing âprogressâ towards understanding what he wants from them and their specific roles in his system. And this may well have been as close as weâve seen United playing to that Amorim ideal.
Patrick Dorgu had his best game since his ÂŁ25m move in January, raiding down the left and delivering several dangerous crosses. Ugarte and Casemiro were combative but also looked to be progressive in their passing. Bruno Fernandes was excellent again without it being His Show again thanks to Alejandro Garnacho, who found space and was positive if not all that productive once again, Mason Mount, whose 20-minute cameo showed why Amorim is convinced heâs perfect for one of the inverted winger roles, and Zirkzee, who put the him or Hojlund debate to bed with a goal and actual stuff strikers do besides.
Weâre all for slamming United when theyâre rubbish, and have done incessantly over the last year, but Paul Scholesâ glum reaction to this game in the TNT Sports studio was weird. This was pretty good.
Rayan Cherkiâs late, late dink over Onana was a blow, but Amorim and United should still be very confident of getting through to the semi-final, because they are better (maybe not âway betterâ) than Lyon on the evidence of this game and if it werenât for the man who made that bolshy claim which came back to bite him in spectacular fashion, they would already have one foot in the next round.
