3 Talking Points From Newcastle United vs Manchester United (0-1): Luck Can Only Get You So Far

Manchester United head  into their FA Cup quarter-final clash on Monday in fourth place after Ashley Young’s late winner secured all three points for the Red Devils. John Carver’s side were unlucky not to take anything from the game, but in the end, paid for not taking their chances and making a suicidal error in defense, even if the refereeing in the game left a lot to be desired for.

Here are the major talking points from the game.

1. An emotional game…

Given the money that is involved in the game, sometimes it is easy to forget the fact that the players are still human beings. They all have families and aren’t too dissimilar to the rest of us, even if they earn more in a month than what most of us make in our life time. For all the talk of Angel Di Maria’s poor form over the past few weeks, lest it be forgotten, the 26-year-old’s home was broken into, in the aftermath of the 3-1 win over Leicester. Since then, Di Maria has had to move his family into a hotel and travel with round the clock security.

Irrespective of the amount of money he earns, the safety of his family is certainly a concern that might be weighing on his mind, when he goes out. But on Wednesday, there was further evidence that life was far more important than football. In the 17 months since his last game for Newcastle, Jonas Gutierrez has been diagnosed and since recovered from testicular cancer. And when he came onto the pitch, the roar from the fans spoke volumes of just how much it meant to them that he was alive and well, let alone ready to kick a ball in anger. Stories like these reiterate the fact that, for all the money in football these days, it is still about humans, and their frame of mind and their stories have a huge bearing on what they do on the pitch and the reception they get from the fans.

2 … which was made sour by incidents on the field

On a day when there was a heartwarming scene of Gutierrez not only making his return after his recovery from cancer, but also given the captain’s armband, the ugly side of the game reared its head again. No, I am not talking about the terrible performance of the linesman Peter Kirkup, who incorrectly flagged for offside when Wayne Rooney was onside and did not give a penalty for a stonewall appeal for the most-obvious candidate for penalty to Newcastle.

I am talking about the antics of Jonny Evans and Papiss Cisse. For all the talk of two-footed tackles and diving, arguably the biggest crime on the pitch is spitting at an opponent and that is precisely what both players seemed to be to doing. In an off the ball incident that led to a free kick for Newcastle, both Evans and Cisse were involved in an incident that might even see them punished retrospectively. After Cisse’s unintentional stamp and then intentional kick out at Evans, the central defender seemed to spit, not at Cisse, but down at the ground beside him. While the Senegalese striker seemed to spit directly at Evans’ neck. By the letter of the law, both players, should have been sent off in an incident that is certain to be revisited  and replayed plenty of times in the coming days.

3. Luck can only get you so far

After another far from convincing win over Newcastle, questions will once again be asked about why Van Gaal is struggling to get it right offensively, why United look so patchy and disjointed going forward. Yet, they sit fourth in the table a point behind Arsenal and five behind Manchester City who are in second. Although you can certainly say that they were lucky to get all three points on Wednesday, at no point did the home side dominate the game and the chances they got only arose from defensive mistakes.

For all the criticisms about the side’s style of play and the passive possession game that everybody seems to hate, the Dutchman is getting the job done. Perhaps, when you spend 150 million, you expect more, but given the injuries they have had to endure this season, the fact that they have lost just twice since December shows that it is not all just luck that they continue to grind out results.