After Erik ten Hag was fired, Manchester United beat Leicester 5-2 to make it to the Carabao Cup quarterfinals. United made everyone at Old Trafford happy with a fun game. Bruno Fernandes, Casemiro, and Alejandro Garnacho all scored two goals, and Garnacho added a third.
In Ruud van Nistelrooy’s first game as temporary manager of Manchester United, the team played very well. United started the time after Erik ten Hag with a bang. The chains were off and the big guns were shooting.
Van Nistelrooy said that United would “get the crowd going,” and he did his best to help from the bench. As he came out of the tunnel, he got the crowd excited. United beat Leicester 5-0 and moved on to the Carabao Cup quarterfinals. Under Ten Hag, United had only scored five goals once.
Something seemed to be lighter, and the team’s success was a nice change. Van Nistelrooy got the crowd excited before the game, which set the mood. During the Ten Hag era, it was often hard to reach goals.
After Ten Hag was fired on Monday, a statistic showed how terrible United’s goal difference was while he was in charge. At +134, Man City was at the top of the list. Liverpool was in second place with +85, and United was down at +11.
When they played Leicester, the senior players stepped up. Bruno Fernandes, the captain, and Casemiro, who the previous boss often forgot about, scored twice at Old Trafford, making for some amazing moments.
After a slow start, Casemiro’s long-range goal was just what United needed to get going again. Fernandes seemed to get back to his old self once United got going. He made chances, was a pest all the time, and was second in touches and chances made.
The method looked a lot like Ten Hag’s on paper, but there was a sense of freedom. That worked for Fernandes. For his first goal, his free kick hit James Justin and went in. He thanked Justin for the assist.
It was also luck, as Van Nistelrooy said, “We scored great goals; Casemiro’s first was a beauty.” We were lucky, though. That made it seem like United’s night. The second goal by Casemiro hit both posts and bounced back into play. Leicester thought Garnacho was not onside.
The reaction to Ten Hag’s firing makes me wonder: Is this what it takes to get these guys to play? Ever since Sir Alex Ferguson quit, players who aren’t playing well start to perform well when they think they’re in the running for their careers.
Five full-time managers have looked for this response and only see it when the next man comes in the door. It seemed like letting Ten Hag go was the only way to stop United’s terrible start. After nine games, being fourteenth in the Premier League table is not good enough.
Ruben Amorim, who is supposed to take over for Ten Hag, still has a lot to do. Leicester was thrashed because they were shocked. Amorim’s job is to keep this progress going and deal with United’s bigger problems.
There are two quarterfinals in the Carabao Cup. United will play Tottenham, and Liverpool will play Southampton. The next task for United is to keep up this level of play.
Finally, Manchester United’s 5-2 win over Leicester was a fun game to watch under Ruud van Nistelrooy. It’s important to keep in mind, though, that this result might just be an outlier and not the start of something new.
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