Manchester United have at least found a way to score in recent Premier League matches, with seven goals across the games against Ipswich Town and Everton. The broader concern, however, remains at the other end of the pitch, where Michael Carrick now has a clear defensive problem to solve.<\/p>\n
For the first time in this league campaign, United have conceded two goals in each of their opening three matches. That has only been matched once before in Premier League history, in 2020-21, when Ole Gunnar Solskj\u00e6r\u2019s side let in 11 goals across their first three fixtures: a 3-1 defeat to Crystal Palace, a 3-2 win over Brighton & Hove Albion and a 6-1 loss to Tottenham Hotspur.<\/p>\n
To find the next occasion, you have to go back more than 50 years, to 1972-73. That was a far more turbulent period for the club, then four years on from becoming England\u2019s first European Cup winners and only two years away from relegation. The campaign began with defeats to Ipswich Town, Liverpool and Everton, and it proved to be the final season for Bobby Charlton and Denis Law, while George Best was also entering the closing stage of his United career. Frank O\u2019Farrell was dismissed four months into the season.<\/p>\n
There are older examples too. In 1964-65, United conceded at least twice in their opening three league matches but still went on to win the title under Matt Busby. The contrast underlines that a poor defensive start does not always define a season, even if it creates an early burden.<\/p>\n
Carrick summed up the issue by saying it was about \u201clittle moments we can deal with a bit better.\u201d Against Hull, set pieces were the issue. More broadly, the concern is that conceding so freely forces the forwards to compensate. Last season, United scored a similar number of league goals to Arsenal, 69 to 71, but shipped almost twice as many, 50 to 27, and finished 14 points behind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
United\u2019s attack has improved, but Carrick must now address a defensive start matched only rarely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19303,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2019,172],"tags":[1836,1162,59],"class_list":["post-19304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-united-news","category-epl","tag-2026-27-premier-league","tag-analytics","tag-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}