This is how a Manchester United team should play. With some confidence, ambition and decisiveness. Expressive and attractive with the ball and resolute without it.
When you see Ruben Amorim’s team function like this – as they occasionally have during his year in charge – it can be difficult to work out why they often make it look so darned hard.
So the challenge now is set. Do it again when they go to Anfield to face the Premier League champions the other side of the international break and then build a season from there.
Let’s see. We have indeed been here before only to see United turn back into one of those dreadful cycles of self-harm.
This, though, was better and that’s what matters today for Amorim, the beleaguered United manager. He had prefaced the game by talking darkly about his prospects and he can now rest a little easier for a week or two at least.
This game was won by two first half goals. One from the resurgent Mason Mount – who was excellent – and a second in two games from new striker Benjamin Sesko, who has taken time to settle but who produced an admirable all-round number nine’s performance. Some of his hold up and link play was first rate.
Man United played how they should against Sunderland at Old Trafford on Saturday
The 2-0 victory will come as a huge relief to the under-pressure Ruben Amorim
United were good to watch during that spell. They could have scored more goals and managed to play some incisive football in what was at times quite abysmal weather.
They didn’t quite keep it going and were more laboured in the second period. But they held Sunderland – confident after a bright start to the season – at arm’s length quite comfortably. The team from Wearside didn’t make a second half chance until substitute Chemsdine Talbi shot against the goalkeeper’s legs in the 90th minute and and Amorim will take heart from that fact too.
Here there were none of the destructive tendencies that have plagued them this season. It was very much a grown-up hour and a half of United football.
Amorim’s headline selection had been to change his goalkeeper as late summer signing Senne Lammens replaced Altay Bayindir and made his club debut. However, the United manager’s decision to play Mount ahead of Matheus Cunha turned out to be more significant.
Mount has struggled in his time at Old Trafford. Injuries have deprived a very talented player of any kind of momentum. As such, it was a big call to play him ahead of Cunha, an expensive off-season arrival who certainly hadn’t been the worst of the bunch at Brentford a week ago.
Nevertheless it paid off after just seven minutes. Sunderland had actually started the game brightly and were comfortable up until the moment Bryan Mbeumo crossed hopefully from the right and Mount controlled the ball with one touch and volleyed it low in to the corner at the Stretford End with another. It was very much a goal out of nowhere and it propelled United forwards to play some confident first half football that was to bring them another goal.
For periods United looked impressive. They were fluid and easy and the eye and capable of creating opportunities. Sunderland goalkeeper Robin Roefs was busy.
Mbeumo was often United’s most dangerous player as he frequently injected conviction into his team’s football. Amad Diallo, over at right wing-back, was also influential and he took one sweet and sweeping pass from Sesko in to his stride before advancing to shoot across the goalkeeper. Roefs saved well as he soon did also from Mbeumo and as he then did brilliantly as Bruno Fernandes curled an effort towards the top corner. That was one of the saves of the season, the fingertip touch diverting the ball on to the frame of the goal.
Mason Mount opened the scoring for the Red Devils with a sweet volley from the edge of the box
Benjamin Sesko made it two a short-time later – his second goal for the club in as many games
Amorim’s headline selection – that of Senne Lammens in-goal – well and truly paid off
This was a sweet period for United and it came midway through the first half. They needed a second goal from it, though, and ultimately got one just after the half hour when a Diallo throw-in was inadvertently headed on by Sunderland’s Nordi Mukiele and volleyed in from close range by Sesko.
This prompted a meeting of Sunderland players as United celebrated. The team from Wearside were not coping with United’s attacking thrusts and something had to change. Manager Regis le Bris did make a tweak soon after in a bid to bolster his defence. Defender Daniel Ballard came on for wide player Simon Adingra as Sunderland went to a back five and he was actually to head his team’s best chance of the half in to the side netting when unmarked at a corner in added time.
That moment came after Sunderland had briefly been awarded a penalty on the say so of a linesman. But VAR soon spotted that Sesko’s raised foot had made no contact with Trai Hume’s head and the decision was correctly changed to a corner kick.
United’s football will have pleased Amorim. All he needed now was a second half of comparable standard. As we know, complete United performances have been hard to come by.
It was an off-day for a Sunderland side who have adjusted well to life in the Premier League thus far
Mount looked like the player United signed from Chelsea, and he got a thank you from Ruben Amorim on his way off
The victory eases the pressure on Amorim for now but, with Liverpool around the corner, that may well change
In the second half, with the wind making controlled football impossible at times, United were actually less fluent. Mbeumo did find a yard of space but couldn’t maintain true balance and shot wide. Significantly, though, there was no sense of alarm at the other end. Le Bris made further changes on the hour but in truth Sunderland looked rather blunt at times. Their bright start to the season has come on the back of parsimony rather than free scoring.
Mount’s afternoon came to an end with half an hour remaining and the ovation as he was replaced by Cunha was prolonged. The former Chelsea player had enjoyed a good afternoon.
United faded as the game wore on. Indeed the life went out of the afternoon. Lammens’ last-minute save from Talbi was a decent one and ensured there was to be no late drama. At kick-off, Amorim would have taken that.
