Manchester United cruise past Fulham in a comprehensive, one-sided and utterly complete victory
Fulham 0-3 Manchester United: This was an incredibly complete performance from United, especially from Paul Pogba, who scored twice, and Anthony Martial, who scored the other
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Your support makes all the difference.If this was Manchester United with half of the first team rested, it is scarcely imaginable what United at full strength would have done to Fulham here this afternoon.
This 3-0 win at Craven Cottage, with the second half played at walking pace, was still one of the most comprehensive, one-sided, complete victories that you will see in the Premier League all season.
Aside from one early miss from Luciano Vietto it was all one-way traffic and there was never the slightest feeling that there might be any result other than an away win. In that sense it could never have been a good game, because they always need competitive tension and suspense. It was more impressive as a performance from Manchester United, especially from Paul Pogba, who scored twice, and Anthony Martial, who scored the other.
But Ole Gunnar Solskjaer did not even need to field his strongest team to get this thumping easy win. Marcus Rashford, Jesse Lingard, Ashley Young and Eric Bailly were all rested, to keep them fresh for Paris Saint Germain on Tuesday night, which will be a very different prospect indeed. It is difficult to disagree with that decision given what we saw here, and the chasmic gulf between the two teams. Who knows what the score would have been here had Solskjaer pushed in all of his chips.
As good as Pogba and Martial were, the most striking part of today was just how bad Fulham were. Because they looked further away than ever from a team that is hoping to stay up. The first expectation of a side second from bottom is that they will do the basics right and be hard to beat. That after all is why they replaced Slavisa Jokanovic with Claudio Ranieri back in November. But this Fulham team in fact do the complete opposite: they get the basics wrong and are very obviously easy to beat.
Yes if Luciano Vietto had scored from their first minute attack it would have been a different story, but he missed. And everything after told the story of why Fulham are almost certainly going down. They just do not want to defend properly. That was clear when Maxime Le Marchand - for whom Fulham will hope that they kept the receipt - tried to play the ball out from the back early on and immediately ran into trouble.
While Pogba’s finish to give United the lead was good, the goal was ushered into being by some of the worst defending you will see anywhere this season, an almost coordinated series of mistakes. Le Marchand overplayed and lost possession, Jean Michael Seri lunged in, Joe Bryam played Pogba onside, Sergio Rico let the ball in at his near post.
Even the second goal, while obviously individually excellent from Anthony Martial, was barely ever challenged by the players whose job it is to do just that. Martial got the ball 10 yards inside his own half as he started to motor forward, too fast for Denis Odoi. Le Marchand was in position to make the tackle but all he did was diffidently hang out a leg, like a man dipping his toe in the sea to find out how cold it was.
No wonder that Martial sped straight past him and put the ball past Rico.
It all made Ranier’s pre-match call for “soldiers who fight to the end” look ludicrously optimistic. What they needed was unity. What they got was discord. Ranieri has made few friends here with his benching of Tom Cairney and Ryan Sessegnon, and when he took off Andre Schurrle not for either of those two but for Cyrus Christie, the fans started to boo.
That change allowed Fulham to go to a back five, but it did not matter how many defenders they had on the pitch when they were all playing this badly. The third goal came when Calum Chambers was brushed away by Pogba, charging forward on the break. When the ball got into the box Le Marchand, looking as lost as ever, tripped Juan Mata and then Pogba scored the penalty.
That was pretty much it, although Babel missed a close chance just before he was taken off. Ranieri finally brought on Cairney and Sessegnon at the end, but it was far too late to make a difference. It may already be too late for Fulham too.
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