Manchester United avoided a second straight Premier League defeat with a late equaliser at Fulham, but the result did little to quiet the concern around their start to the 2026\/27 season.<\/p>\n
For much of the afternoon, it seemed as if United were heading for consecutive league losses for the first time in more than a year, dating back to the closing stages of 2024\/25. The match changed in the 89th minute when Matheus Cunha struck from distance, only for the effort to be heavily deflected off David Affengruber and beyond Bernd Leno.<\/p>\n
The point leaves United on five from five, a tally that matches their joint-lowest at this stage of a Premier League campaign, alongside 2014\/15. They will remain 12th during the international break before returning on Oct. 10 against Tottenham Hotspur, who are bottom of the table.<\/p>\n
Gary Neville, speaking on Sky Sports, offered a blunt assessment of the period after half-time, describing it as the \u201cworst\u201d 15 minutes he\u2019s ever seen from any Manchester United team. United\u2019s tempo, urgency and willingness to run were all questioned, with the side having covered almost 7 kilometers less than Fulham by the 73rd minute.<\/p>\n
Senne Lammens kept United in touch in the first half with four saves, including quick stops to deny Joshua King and Sander Berge. He later could have done better when Fulham went ahead, as his parry from Calvin Bassey\u2019s shot created the opening for the goal.<\/p>\n
Marcus Rashford\u2019s return has been viewed positively in general, yet this match underlined the gap between effort and end product. In 77 minutes, he led United for touches in the opposition box and shots, but still left without a goal contribution. Across six appearances this season, he has yet to score or assist.<\/p>\n
There was also curiosity over United\u2019s all-blue away kit, worn competitively for the first time on Sunday after only appearing in preseason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
United rescued a point at Fulham, but the performance and stats left fresh concerns before the break.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19979,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[713,179,172],"tags":[1836,1162,180],"class_list":["post-19980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fulham","category-manchester-united","category-epl","tag-2026-27-premier-league","tag-analytics","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19980","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=19980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}