Manchester United don’t win many football matches these days, but there’s no denying their flair for the dramatic when they do.
This Europa League win over Rangers was just United’s fourth in their last 13 games across four competitions – or fifth win if you want to count the penalty-shootout success against Arsenal which we’ll allow if you like because it doesn’t particularly undermine the whole ‘dramatic’ point.
But let’s just consider the four wins in that run that has otherwise contained an inordinate amount of listlessness, misery, despair and ennui.
The first of those wins came in this competition against Viktoria Plzen thanks to a Rasmus Hojlund goal in the 88th minute. That is, absurdly, the earliest United winner during this run.
They didn’t even get their equaliser at Man City until then, with Amad Diallo then providing the spectacular finishing touch in stoppage time.
And it was Amad once again who did the necessary against Southampton, equalising in the 82nd minute, winning the game in the 91st and then completing his hat-trick in the 95th because why not do that?
Now there is this win against Rangers to add to the collection, Bruno Fernandes slotting home from close range with 92 minutes on the clock, just four minutes after Rangers had themselves brought the high drama with an unlikely and spectacular Cyriel Dessers equaliser.
It doesn’t feel like a particularly sustainable way to win games, and those nine (or eight, depending on your point of view) games that have passed by without United winning would appear to offer some support to that uncontroversial theory.
But it’s also not nothing. It is clear to anyone with eyes and a brain in their skull that United are not playing particularly well particularly often. Yet the way they have managed to somehow still occasionally drag themselves over the line kicking and screaming points to… something at least. There is still fight there, and occasionally – at Arsenal in the cup or Liverpool in the league, say – an actual performance to go with it.
As with Spurs’ earlier success against Hoffenheim, the points matter more than the performance at this stage of two very silly seasons and as with Spurs’ earlier success against Hoffenheim that’s just as well.
Because this was not one of those nights when United’s performance offered much encouragement against a Rangers side who, just as they had in an earlier Battle of Britain when drawing 1-1 at home to Spurs, gave at least as good as they got for large chunks of the game.
The first half had very little to recommend it beyond one of the softest disallowed goals we’ve seen. Perhaps the referee simply decided United didn’t deserve to be in front in a game they had barely bothered to begin at that time.
That feels like a controversial and dangerous road for officials to set off down, but it would be hard to argue with the fairness of it on this occasion. Was there a law that offered any kind of acceptable way to disallow that goal? Not really. Did United deserve a goal for their football up to that point? Definitely not.
The second half saw some improvement from United, who began to pin Rangers back and probably did deserve the lead by the time they got hold of it. Again, presumably not why Jack Butland decided to punch a Christian Eriksen corner directly into his own net, but there we are.
That did seem like it ought to be that, with an already injury-hit Rangers forced to send on more and more small children as substitutes as the game wore on. United adding to their lead seemed far more feasible than any other outcome at this point, but that is where United are currently to be found at their most absurd.
A long ball over the top was thoroughly muffed by Harry Maguire, who could still nevertheless consider himself unfortunate to be punished so severely by Dessers bringing the ball down and then finishing with such astonishing aplomb.
But up popped Bruno to convert a delicious cross that came from Lisandro Martinez for some reason, and secure another wild late win.
It’s a goal of potentially huge importance as well. There was just time between the two late goals here for TNT Sports to flash up an as-it-stands table to show just how important. Without that late winner, United would have slipped to ninth and needing an away win next week to get back in the top eight.
Instead, they now sit fourth and almost certain to finish in that top eight. Ninth is not the place anyone wants to finish in Europe these days, condemning you as it does to the punishment play-off round when you’ve very obviously tried to avoid it by finishing so close. If you’re going to end up ninth, you really might as well have sacked it off a bit earlier and cruised home in 19th or somesuch.
It’s just one of the many vagaries of this new-look European football, but the point now is that United are set to enjoy free midweeks before Premier League trips to Spurs (who should also now have that luxury) and Everton. Which are a pair of uncomfortably hefty games for a team still not quite out of the relegation woods.
Who knows, they might be so rested and relaxed in those games now that they manage to locate a winner before it gets desperate.
