As we all licked our wounds from Tuesday’s robbery in Paris, it was interesting to see how Man Utd got on last night in their vital Champions League group game away to Galatasaray.
Before a ball was kicked, it was already a plus for us that they’d have one day less to recover and prepare for Saturday night’s 8pm kick-off on Tyneside, but the game itself was a grueling one.
After being 2-0 and 3-1 up, they surrendered two-goal leads not once but twice, with some naive defending and more costly errors from Andre Onana seeing them draw a six-goal thriller 3-3.
The result – which was followed by Copenhagen’s 0-0 draw at Bayern Munich – means they are now highly unlikely to qualify from their group. Only a win over Bayern and draw between Copenhagen and Galatasaray in two weeks time will see them reach the knockout stages.
Ten Hag’s game management has been slated and there’ll be plenty of tired legs (and minds) in their camp today, with the awful conditions, hostile atmosphere and end-to-end nature of the game being exactly what we wanted to see after our huge shift in Paris 24 hours earlier.
So, if an away trip to Turkey wasn’t bad enough for the Red Devils, they’ll now face a wounded Newcastle side out for blood on the back of a damaging draw that ended with both sides out on their feet. Saturday night under the lights can’t come quick enough…
They have a large enough squad to recover, we are running full throttle on the bare bones.
Joseph(Quote)