Man United need time“What a difference a day makes,” as the song goes and for football fans who watch teams rise and fall, trading positions as they score or concede, it’s much more about 90 little minutes than 24 little hours. Heading into Sunday’s action, it was the red half of Manchester that sat atop the table, albeit only holding down first place on goal difference. Now, less than 24 hours later they’ve been kicked down to third and will be given a stern test when league play resumes after the international break with a trip to Arsenal’s Borehamwood home.
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After United’s nervy 1-0 win over Leicester City last month, manager Marc Skinner, who has struggled to win over fans since taking charge of the Red Devils at the start of last season, was keen to impress that football isn’t always glorious “We’re not always going to perform brilliantly, I’ll stress that to the fans. We want to perform brilliantly, but we’re not always going to.”
Indeed, what’s all too often forgotten about Manchester United Women is that the team is just four years old and they played in the second division for their first season — the only professional club in the Championship at the time. Compare them with an Arsenal team that was winning titles before some of the United players were even born, or a Chelsea team that have spent a decade with current manager Emma Hayes alone, or even a Manchester City team that was brought under the wing and enjoyed fast investment just eight years ago.
In short, United have always been playing catch-up and quickly; where Arsenal, Chelsea and City could all grow into leagues that weren’t fully professional, investing at their own pace, the Red Devils have tried to race to the front and stay there. As any decorated distance runner will tell you, it’s about race management and not going too hard, too soon; the analogy gets a little murky when transposed onto football, but success is quite simply something that needs to be viewed in the long term.
It takes time, too. Women’s football is riddled with teams that poured huge sums of money in too quickly and soon went bust — from Champions League runners-up Tyresö FF (2013-14) or the Italian what-could-have-beens, A.S.D. FC Sassari Torres, or any of the 60% of Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS) teams who were dissolved during the five-year existence of the precursor to the top U.S. league, the National Women’s Soccer League.
For Skinner and United, the gap to the top two or three is closing, that much is clear, yet as seen at Leigh Sports Village yesterday evening, the hosts can’t be relied on to go 90 minutes with the WSL champions and finish on top. It was about the quality Chelsea could bring into the game, about the experience of those who’ve won the title multiple times; the game was a close [and sloppy] one but the result was a fair one.
Man City on the rise
If there’s one way to guarantee a reversal of fortunes, it’s to get an ESPN journalist to write about them — the Citizens have racked up four wins from four (in all competitions) with 14 goals scored and one conceded since someone on here rubbished them.
Furthermore, if we look at their last two games, even though they dominated possession as we’d expect them to, there is still the feeling that this is a team stuck in a lower gear, and simply revving their engine loudly won’t stop the Arsenals and Chelseas from overtaking them on the track. Against Liverpool, the hosts needed a strike from Hayley Raso 15 minutes from time to come away with all three points and against Reading, the match was all but decided by two own goals from the Royals before Shaw added a late third.
The good news for City is the stickiest part of this season, when they’ll face Chelsea and Arsenal the following week, isn’t until the Spring, though the last two months will likely end up defining their campaign. By which time everyone should be settled, and the team should be playing their best football.
Chelsea still waiting to hit top gear
Much like the two teams from Manchester, there’s something verging on “box ticking” from Chelsea going on this season. They’re a team with flashes of greatness, but often looking like they’re going through the motions.
It would be too simple to say that the team are simply missing Hayes in the dugout while she is away from the team following a hysterectomy. As she said in her statement, “we have built a tremendous team over many years and we’ve adopted a very multi-disciplinary approach so that if situations like this arise, we are capable of being able to respond to the challenge. We have full confidence in Paul [Green], Denise [Reddy] and all of the staff. We also know the team are very special and we have no doubt they’ll do everything to maintain their high standards.”
