They don’t deserve him, do they?
Even before this absurd one-man rescue mission turned an apparent 1-0 defeat against Southampton into a wildly flattering 3-1 win it has long been possible to idly wonder what depths to which United’s season might have sunk without Amad Diallo.
There is now no need to wonder how bad it might have looked. The answer is: this bad. For 80 minutes, this looked set to be a new humiliating low for United in a season full of them. Given a genuine runaround by a side marooned at the foot of the table, on course even to be the worst Premier League team of all time, so chaotically confused at the back that they conceded from a corner for the 10th time this season to a team scoriing that way for the first.
But for a couple of decent Peter Schmeichel impressions from Andre Onana, the hole from which Amad would eventually and spectacularly extract his team could have been far deeper. Had Kamaldeen Sulemana had even a smidge of final-decision composure to match the rest of his performance, not even Amad would have been able to do anything about this.
For the first hour of this game, United were abysmal and Southampton excellent. And the most shocking thing about that is that it wasn’t shocking. Apart from the Southampton being excellent part.
There is not a Manchester United fan alive who wouldn’t have foreseen this kind of performance on the back of the sterling efforts at Liverpool and Arsenal recently. Ruben Amorim hinted at it after the Liverpool game; Bruno Fernandes flat out said it. What United showed us here against the Saints would tell us far more about them than any heroic occasion-rising for those big games.
And really, despite the ridiculousness of what Amad did between the 82nd and 94th minutes, we still have our answer.
Bruno tried to get United moving in the right direction in the first half, but there were just never the numbers or the endeavour or simply the bravery to put Southampton under sustained pressure.
United for the first hour of this game managed the neat trick of playing with a penned-in back five that left them woefully short of ideas and purpose going forward yet without Leny Yoro ever getting the assistance he so desperately and obviously needed in his mismatch of a contest with Sulemana.
Time and again the Southampton attacker found himself spinning away from Yoro having yet again managed to engineer a one-on-one race with only one winner. While Ruben Amorim’s second-half substitutes would have a sizeable impact on the eventual outcome, the oceans of time that passed without seemingly any attempt from the United boss to provide any kind of remedy for the most glaring problem imaginable was deeply vexing.
Southampton in that first two-thirds of the game had heroes everywhere you looked. Mateus Fernandes and Tyler Dibling were excellent behind Sulemana’s rampaging runs, Joe Aribo dominated the midfield battle against Kobbie Mainoo and Manuel Ugarte, while Taylor Harwood-Bellis – who would end the night narrowly failing to score an equaliser before a horror show for the third goal – was imperious in the air and composed on the ground.
For 80 minutes, Kyle Walker-Peters seemed to have the measure of Amad too, right up until he absolutely and entirely didn’t.
Everywhere else you looked were red-shirted horror stories. Alejandro Garnacho played precisely like you might expect a man to play having spent the last 48 hours being linked with Tottenham. The very idea of leaping from this frying-pan into that fire would be enough to wrack anyone with self-doubt, and Garnacho had plenty. He missed glaringly from United’s one coherent move in the first half having been neatly picked out by Rasmus Hojlund, and had an evening riddled with questionable decision-making and worse execution. We’ve all been there.
Neither Ugarte nor Mainoo made it to the hour mark, and neither could have a single complaint given how second-best United found themselves against what is with all due respect not the most heralded of Southampton midfields.
Yoro’s time on the pitch was universally torrid. Lisandro Martinez ran about a bit while looking generally confused, Matthijs De Ligt made some desperate last-ditch interventions in the middle while spending much of the night studiously trying not to see what was happening to Yoro just to his right.
Noussair Mazraoui – who has been one of United’s main sources of relief and comfort this season – was never able to provide anything of value in the ‘wing’ element of his job description in this system and even Amad – clearly United’s least bad outfield player even in that absolute abomination of a first half – showed a fair bit of defensive naivety in failing to offer any real help to the perma-beleaguered Yoro.
Amorim made one change at half-time and could frankly have made five. There were few who could have complained. But when the half-time answer if Antony, the question can only be a grim one.
He somehow contrived to miss an absolute and literal sitter when it was still 1-0, his decision to try and score while sat on his arse enough to cause even Ally McCoist on co-comms to lose his sense of humour momentarily.
By then, Amorim’s other changes had started to take effect, though. That Hojlund and Ugarte lasted only eight minutes of the second half was just as telling as Mainoo’s half-time hooking. Their replacements both made a difference, with the only caveat being that they could scarcely fail to improve the standard.
Joshua Zirkzee added a much-needed pep and fizz to United’s attack, Toby Collyer doing likewise to the previously soporific midfield.
But there will be only one name on the lips of those who watched this game. It is always genuinely thrilling to watch a young player realise what they are and can be in real time as Amad has this season. It is also, logically when you think about it, a blossoming that often occurs in the very harshest soil.
Amad made his own luck for the first, the ball breaking back into his path off Walker-Peters, who had an excellent first 80 and nightmarish final 10 here, before being instantly recontroled and rifled past Aaron Ramsdale with the weaker right foot.
The second was properly good, a clever volleyed finish from the sort of impeccably weighted clipped pass over a defence that has time to realise they are screwed but no time to act upon that information for which Christian Eriksen has been known for a decade or more now. It was precisely the sort of goal you might see Dele Alli score in 2017.
The third goal was the sort of goal we got used to seeing Southampton concede in 2024 and the less said about it the better. It was harsh on Harwood-Bellis, who had been so good until a sliver of utter woke nonsense crept in to allow Amad to complete his hat-trick. One wonders if his mind was still on the header he’d sent goalwards moments earlier, only to see it ricochet to safety off team-mate Flynn Downes.
That Amad was there to pounce on that error even in that moment, 94 minutes into a game he had already dragged his side back into kicking and screaming, says everything about where he’s at right now.
And for neither the first nor one suspects the final time this season, United were enormously, desperately grateful.
