Manchester United finally gave the Old Trafford faithful something to smile about, the Red Devils running out comfortable 3-0 winners over Brentford tonight.
Lax defending has been a feature of Man United’s performance’s all season and it was literally seconds after kick-off when this issue reared it’s ugly head. Straight from the tip off Christian Eriksen played a wonderful ball through the United defence and found Bryan Mbeumo in the area, although left-back Alex Telles recovered in time to force a clearance out for a corner.
Just a minute later Cristiano Ronaldo went close, the Portuguese superstar took down a superb Diogo Dalot ball on the chest, but the 37-year-old slipped with only the Brentford ‘keeper left to beat.
The end-to-end nature of the game continued and on 10 minutes another fine ball forward by Dalot resulted in the home side taking the lead. Young attacker Anthony Elanga showed excellent pace to reach the Portuguese right-back’s pass and cut it back for Bruno Ferandes who hammered home on the volley.
Just before the break it seemed that Ronaldo had capped off a fine individual showing with a first-time finish, although VAR adjudged the veteran attacker to have been offside from Juan Mata’s cross field pass.
Fernandes then almost scored that crucial second goal on 52 minutes, but the playmaker fired his effort wide of David Raya’s goal after being played through by Nemanja Matic.
Not long after that the hugely impressive Eriksen forced David de Gea into a decent stop with a drilled free kick from all of 30 yards, before a low Ivan Toney effort demanded a trademark save from the Spanish ‘keeper.
Brentford’s growing momentum was cut short on the hour mark though when Ronaldo hit his 18th of the season. The former Real Madrid and Juventus goal machine was taken down by Bees defender Rico Henry, before he duly stepped up and fired a powerful spot-kick into the bottom corner.
🇵🇹 RECORD: Cristiano Ronaldo has now scored 24 goals for Manchester United this season.
This is the highest number of goals for a player aged 37 or over in Europe’s Top 5 leagues in the last 30 years. 🐐 pic.twitter.com/5NfhqOiTg3
— Football Tweet ⚽ (@Football__Tweet) May 2, 2022
On 73 minutes the Red Devils had their third and it came via a Raphael Varane volley from a corner, the French World Cup winner scoring his first goal for the Old Trafford outfit.
Tonight’s game was United’s last at Old Trafford this season and speaking afterwards interim manager Ralf Rangnick was pleased with the display although he lamented his sides lack of consistency over recent weeks.
“We were in control for most parts,” Rangnick told Sky Sports. ”In possession that was one of our best performances this year. It was the type of performance we wanted to show to our supporters.
“We played with Juan Mata and Nemanja Matic and that gave us some quality in midfield. It was not too easy for Brentford to take the ball away from us. In the first half we played too many square and back passes but in general it was a good performance.
“In the end I’m not happy with the results [overall], especially in the last four or five weeks. Until the West Ham game we were still in the race in three competitions. We had good moments until that West Ham game, we conceded fewer goals but in the last few weeks performances have not been as good as they should have been. In general we have lacked consistency.”
