But COME ON!!! How can United even live with themselves after a such horrid performance against Coventry City?? Anytime a solid Premiership squad falls to a second-tier team it’s an upset, but here we’re talking about Man United! Next thing you know, we’ll be talking about them facing a relegation battle (ha).
In fact, forget about calling it a horrid performance. Instead, give all the credit to Coventry, who were clearly the only squad who came to Old Trafford to play some football. Even the the other “big clubs” have a lot of trouble giving United a good battle on their home ground. Seriously, the fact that the Reds lost on their home pitch makes the story ten times as surprising.
I know that Sir Alex sent out a younger, more inexperienced squad, but the lineup still included Nani, Anderson, and John O’Shea. Name one player on Coventry who matches up to that level of talent. Manchester United’s B-Squad, and maybe even their C-Squad, is generally thought to be more than capable of easily defeating any of the clubs in the lower divisions. Today, Coventry proved that theory wrong. Make no mistake, United didn’t give the game away- it was taken from them.
It truly does seem like the gap between the Big Four and all the other clubs in England is slowly staring to shorten. Perhaps this is just an off-year, but I’m not convinced that Chelsea, United, and Liverpool are just “going through a phase” of bad performances. Mourinho certainly didn’t deserve to be fired, and it is a CRIME that Martin Jol from Spurs wasn’t the first manager to get the sack this year (remember at the beginning of the year when Tottenham were considered to be a serious darkhorse contender for the Premiership title? Yeah, me neither). One could argue that the quality of play in the Prem has been subpar this year, but we’ll see how the rest of the season plays out. Who knows, maybe Chelsea and United will find their form sometime soon?
