Horror injury to Luke Shaw adds to a disappointing night in Eindhoven

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Louis Van Gaal had only managed to beat PSV in 2 of his last 11 attempts, and last night he failed to improve on that record. Overall, Man Utd played OK – Memphis took his goal extremely well, and realistically we should have been 3 or 4 to the good by the time PSV equalized. But ultimately, we left the Philips Stadion with nothing.

The injury to Luke Shaw is a massive blow, not just from United’s point of view, as he was starting to show just why we paid such a huge fee, but of course for him personally to have to sit out the season and most likely miss the Euros has to be a huge disappointment. We all of course wish him well and hope to see him back playing for us as soon as possible.

Both Darmian and Blind should have done more to prevent PSV’s first goal, scored by the player who recklessly broke Luke Shaw’s leg. The second PSV goal, whilst defensively not great from our point of view, was a brilliant cross and a well taken header – it showed if you play with width and stretch defences, and put in that killer cross, you are likely to score. Unfortunately we didn’t produce one cross of the same quality over the 90 minutes.

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My biggest question to Van Gaal right now is how is he expecting to be successful this season with only 1 established striker in the squad – Rooney. Surely he must have anticipated that he would get injured, suspended, or just need resting at some point. To now have our scoring hopes rest on a 19 year old, regardless of how much promise he is showing, seems completely mad when you spent over £200 million in a relatively short period of time.

Last night we were too narrow again, and I didn’t quite understand taking off Young for Valencia. Personally I think with 30 minutes to go, I would have brought on Fellaini and Valencia for Herrera and Darmian, and played Young and Valencia on the wings with Memphis, Martial and Fellaini all in the attacking roles. We needed a goal; we needed to get it out wide and put in some crosses that maybe Fellaini could win in the air for either Martial or Memphis to get on to score. Alternatively we would have still had Mata and Schweinsteiger to play through the middle which may have been easier by stretching the PSV defence wider. The 3 at the back would have been able to handle PSV.

The bottom line is that without another striker we are going to find it very difficult to come back in games where we are trailing, and whist players like Martial and Memphis may turn out to be great long term buys, it’s unfair to have unrealistic expectations on such young lads in their first seasons with United .

We may now need to win one of the remaining away games and win all 3 at home to qualify for the knock out stages. Simply put, last night was a game we should have won and we can’t have any excuses for dropping those 3 valuable points.

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