Louis van Gaal has made a number of changes to his Manchester United team that drew with Leicester City last week as Morgan Schneiderlin, Marouane Fellaini and Jesse Lingard start against West Ham while Anthony Martial will be given another chance to impress on his 20th birthday.
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With West Ham hitting the same post twice in quick succession, once when Chris Smalling and Mauro Zarate challenged for the loose ball after De Gea spilled a cross, the next time when Reid was unlucky with a header from a corner, there was more goalmouth incident in the first half hour than this crowd has seen in whole games of late.
After so many months of tedium, many home fans are no longer cutting their side any slack after five goalless draws in their past nine games.
But now we have to come as much as possible and maybe we can beat everyone, that I am sure. Just before the break United’s German global Bastian Schweinsteiger was fortunate to escape with no more than a talking to from referee Mark Clattenburg, after appearing to throw an elbow at Reid. Under Van Gaal, it’s becoming the norm.
Despite receiving a fair amount of criticism about their cautious style, United went into the game unbeaten at home all season, and off the back of an undefeated sequence in all competitions during November. “You never know… I think they would”.
United will be without captain Wayne Rooney for the match against Slaven Bilic’s side as well as the following Champions League encounter due to an ankle injury. Earlier, Moses raced through one-on-one, but was denied by David de Gea.
Zarate almost had West Ham ahead on 57 minutes after he was fed through on goal by Andy Carroll, but the Argentine could only drag his effort wide having gone one-on-one with De Gea.
It was the same pair who combined with Memphis Depay with eight minutes left to carve out United’s best chance, but Martial, connecting with the Dutchman’s cross, side-footed wide from ten yards.
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“It was everything but a boring game”, he said. They had chances of course, but we deserved at least a point here. “In Barcelona, Bayern Munich and AZ Alkmaar we played like that”, the United manager said.
