Southampton 1 - 2 Manchester United

Manchester United’s Robin van Persie cuts down unlucky Southampton

Southampton 1 - 2 Man Utd

Southampton
Pelle 31'

Man Utd
Robin van Persie 12', 71'




Neither the leaders nor the reigning champions will be quaking in their boots just yet but that ominous rumbling at their backs is Manchester United on the charge. Louis van Gaal’s side forced a fifth successive victory here, a win achieved in spite of clear defensive frailties, to suggest that they are the most likely contenders from the pack to challenge the duopoly at the top.

Even with that burst of form behind them the pursuit still appears unlikely and quite whether a team so awkwardly thrown together at the back can sustain a long-term challenge, given the power of Chelsea and Manchester City, remains to be seen. Yet the thought of United building up a head of steam with funds to spend in January could yet prove unnerving to all-comers. This may have been an opportune time to visit Southampton, a team shorn of too many key performers, but the visitors departed having risen to third and heartened to have achieved success from a mishmash of a display.

They admitted as much afterwards, the matchwinner Robin van Persie conceding they had not played well and Van Gaal claiming that only three of his players had justified their reputation. Southampton, as “the better team”, had apparently merited more. Gary Neville, up in his pundit’s role for television, went further to claim United had “got away with murder” – an assessment that provoked a rather more prickly reaction from his former club’s manager. Liverpool await on Sunday, a game between “pub teams” according to Neville but a fixture to have the juices flowing. At some stage this side’s deficiencies will return to haunt them but at present they have momentum.

This ended up seeming ruthless. The three attempts at goal mustered by United represented their fewest in the Premier League in 11 years and, if it was appropriate that Van Persie should determine the result of this division’s first game between Dutch managers, the win had seemed implausible for long periods. United had hardly stirred as an attacking force since taking an early lead courtesy of the first of Southampton’s gifts and weathered regular pressure thereafter until Wayne Rooney’s free-kick from deep looped over the clutter in the six-yard box. And there was Van Persie, with Marouane Fellaini just as untracked at his back, having meandered on to the looped delivery with ease. He prodded his finish through Fraser Forster’s legs from close range and the Saints were beaten.

Ronald Koeman was deflated by how obliging his own charges had been against opponents who appeared there for the taking. José Fonte had set the tone with his errant backpass early on, delivered as Van Persie burst beyond him on his blind side to intercept and convert cleverly beyond a distraught goalkeeper. United created nothing else of note. “We deserved more,” grumbled the home manager. “I said to my players: ‘It’s easy, in my opinion, we were beaten by Manchester United tonight. We lost by ourselves.’”

This was a third successive defeat but the trickiest to digest, given how ramshackle the visitors had appeared at the back. United lost Chris Smalling to a groin strain early on and hooked Paddy McNair off before the first half was up almost as a mercy, Van Gaal having grown alarmed at the mistakes that littered the youngster’s game. He had almost presented Shane Long with the lead – not the only opportunity spurned by the Irishman – and had been one of those panicked by Steve Davis’s burst just after the half-hour which culminated in Dusan Tadic’s choked shot and Graziano Pellè’s slammed equaliser. McNair was left appearing a scapegoat, even if the Italian’s first goal in a little under 10 hours owed more to Fellaini surrendering possession weakly in the centre.

By the interval the visitors were employing Michael Carrick as a third centre-half while Jonny Evans desperately tried to rediscover some rhythm on his first appearance since the 5-3 capitulation at Leicester in September. Every permutation of United’s rearguard looks fragile at present, the three-man combination far too awkward and neither Antonio Valencia or Ashley Young convincing as a wing-back. Southampton should have capitalised but Long’s point-blank header was smartly pushed away by David de Gea, who later saved superbly from Pellè. The goalkeeper has had to be United’s most consistent performer this term out of necessity.

Yet this team is still finding a way to prevail. Those 3m shares put up for sale by Edward Glazer during the game may have been worth rather more by the final whistle, when United had established themselves as the nearest challengers to the top two. “It’s fantastic now to be third in the table,” added Van Gaal before the realism kicked in yet again. “But I’d hope we’d do that with a better performance because, tonight, we were the lucky team.”