Premier League: Similar results but different Uniteds

TONIGHT'S battle of the Uniteds takes place at a very late time, for a Saturday game, at 8pm, as Newcastle United play host to Manchester United at St James’ Park.

The reason for the late kick-off arises from the midweek exertions for both sides, playing away in the Champions League. While both sides gave up leads to come away with a similar drawn result, there will be significantly different moods in either camp with the single point achieved.

Newcastle can take a great deal more satisfaction from the effort made in their draw on Tuesday against PSG. And but for another dreadful interpretation of the hand-ball rule by VAR, in the last seconds of an eight-minute injury-time extension to the game, they were set to claim a memorable victory against their fellow oil barons in Paris.

The Geordie side played with a well-balanced and organised defensive structure that effectively shut down the vaunted Paris attack for the guts of a 100 minutes.

The Kylian Mbappe penalty ensured PSG are still well in the hunt to qualify for the knockout stages. While Newcastle will have to beat Milan away and hope that Dortmund do them a favour against the Parisians if they hope to make it out of this aptly named ‘group of death’.

This may prove a bridge too far for the Geordies to achieve, but few would have seen them still in contention in match day 6 when the draw was made this summer and we saw the illustrious company lined up against them.

If Newcastle’s Champions League fate comes down to the penalty awarded against Tino Livramento at the Parc des Princes, then Newcastle can feel rightly hard done by, especially when Uefa seemingly have accepted the hand-ball decision as an error when they stood down the VAR official the very next day.

Regrets

On the other side of the spectrum, Man United will look back at their Wednesday night draw against Galatasaray with a mixture of regret, anger and bewilderment.

After overcoming the feared ‘Welcome to Hell’ atmosphere of Istanbul to take a two-goal lead and again pushing on to go 3-1 up in the second half, they somehow contrived, AGAIN, to squander their advantage and let the Turkish side claim a deserved draw from a thrilling, frantic, and definitely tactically naive encounter.

The best and worst in United was on show again on Wednesday night. The strikes and build up to Garnacho, Fernandes and McTominay’s goals were exciting and showed some accomplished passing that few sides would have an answer to. But the United defence was shambolic in comparison. Early on, Galatasaray showed their danger from set-pieces but United ignored the signals and continued to give away free-kicks in dangerous positions, which Kerem Akturkoglu was more than happy to dispatch to the net, albeit with a great deal of help from Andre Onana in the United goal. The Cameroonian shot-stopper has steadied his form in the Premier League but has had a nightmarish run of mishaps in the Champions League this season.

But beyond Onana's rubber hands, the United defending was woeful and that is not just the case for the actual defenders alone. There is a collective frailty across the team when they don’t have possession of the ball. Too many individuals in the team find it ok to opt out when it comes to getting the ball back.

In this season’s Champions League campaign alone, United have managed to squander leads on five occasions across three games, two from two-goal leads. They have also conceded four penalties in five games, and it could have been five from five, had the same VAR official at the Newcastle game been officiating in Istanbul.

Indeed, Eddie Howe must have ruefully looked on when the similar Man United handball, as his player’s infringement, was merely waved away by the referee.

Same but different

Both Uniteds now face must-win final games to their groups, the week after next. Man United may have the advantage here as they are at home to an already qualified Bayern Munich, while Newcastle face an AC Milan side that are still in with a chance themselves. Although Newcastle will have the advantage of no doubt having a fervent home crowd shouting them on.

Before all that, the sixth and seventh placed sides meet tonight in their domestic league. Again, after having very similar seasons so far, with some impressive wins, followed by disturbing defeats. The difference here for the two Uniteds being that Newcastle’s failings were more down to having key talent absent due to injury, while the Manchester version were losing due to their near allergic-like revulsion to defending.