Ruben Amorim admitted in the build-up to Manchester United\u2019s trip to Brentford that even he had no idea what kind of performance his side would put in. The first 45 minutes at the Gtech Community Stadium provided the kind of answers that will cause concern at Old Trafford.<\/p>\n
Igor Thiago struck twice inside 20 minutes to put the Red Devils on the back foot. The opener followed Matheus Cunha being dispossessed and a lengthy clearance from Jordan Henderson that somehow found Thiago in space inside United\u2019s half. He controlled the ball, drove forward and fired a left-footed shot in off the post with Altay Bay\u0131nd\u0131r reportedly motionless. Bay\u0131nd\u0131r\u2019s starting position and Harry Maguire\u2019s defending will both come under scrutiny; Maguire was the only defender in United\u2019s half when the ball was launched and allowed Thiago to remain onside.<\/p>\n
Bay\u0131nd\u0131r was busy at the other end of the same period, denying headers from Sepp van den Berg and Nathan Collins as Brentford rose highest on two set-piece occasions. Minutes later, Matthijs de Ligt was caught out by another long ball. Thiago combined with Kevin Schade before the German\u2019s pull back was flapped at by Bay\u0131nd\u0131r and the former slotted reacted quicker than Luke Shaw to slide home.<\/p>\n
The 4\u20130 defeat suffered by Erik ten Hag in August 2022 came flooding back into many people\u2019s minds as United once again looked woefully inept. Luckily, they sprung into life to claw themselves back into the half. Summer signing Benjamin \u0160e\u0161ko needed three bites at the cherry to finally blast past Caoimhin Kelleher from close range, the 22-year-old rifling into the net after what the match described as weak goalkeeping from the Irishman. Bryan Mbeumo\u2019s presence was noted as enough to make the former Liverpool stopper barely get a glove on Patrick Dorgu\u2019s cross.<\/p>\n
Matheus Cunha later had an effort deflected wide as United finished the half with a more positive spell. Even so, the 13-time Premier League winners had shot themselves in the foot with lackadaisical, erratic defending. The goals conceded took the tally to 52 goals conceded from Amorim\u2019s 33 games in charge, a number the club will view as unacceptably high for any realistic hopes of a top-half finish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At Gtech Community Stadium, United’s first 45 minutes were chaotic, conceding two early goals. More.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3137,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[728,1083,969],"tags":[1001,1021,317],"class_list":["post-3138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brentford","category-man-utd","category-premier-league","tag-altay-bayindir","tag-amorim","tag-benjamin-sesko"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3138","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=3138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}