Manchester United recovered from an early setback to beat Crystal Palace 2-1 at Old Trafford on Sunday and move up to third in the Premier League table. Maxence Lacroix opened the scoring in the third minute, but his later dismissal turned the game. Lacroix was sent off 10 minutes into the second half for tugging back Matheus Cunha in a goalscoring position, and United levelled from the penalty spot.<\/p>\n
Bruno Fernandes stepped up and converted the spot kick against Dean Henderson. He then created the decisive goal, delivering a right-sided cross with the velocity required for Benjamin \u0160e\u0161ko to steer a header beyond Henderson and secure all three points. \u0160e\u0161ko had been quiet for much of the opening hour but produced a finishing touch that continued an excellent run. It was his sixth in his last seven games, and his fourth on the bounce.<\/p>\n
The match exposed several issues for the hosts. United were slow to react to Lacroix\u2019s early strike and produced a drab, imbalanced first half that invited comparison to Ruben Amorim\u2019s turgid tenure. Palace, having played in Conference League action on Thursday, showed more clarity, conviction and energy in the opening 45 minutes while United benefited from an extra week without midweek fixtures.<\/p>\n
Carrick\u2019s side have now added points in less glamorous fashion after earlier statement wins at the start of his tenure. In the previous two outings \u0160e\u0161ko had salvaged a point with a stoppage-time finish at West Ham United and decided an ugly contest with Everton by rounding off a rapid counter-attack. Those finishes, and Sunday\u2019s recovery, have helped perpetuate the momentum under Carrick.<\/p>\n
Luke Shaw, who had started poorly, was forced off midway through the first half after a collision with Daniel Mu\u00f1oz. Carrick brought on the right-footed Noussair Mazraoui, a change that left United light on left-sided width. Amad Diallo was sacrificed to accommodate \u0160e\u0161ko, and Bryan Mbeumo shifted to the right for Palace. The result will please United\u2019s hierarchy as points were taken, but the performance highlighted areas that still require attention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
United recovered after an early Lacroix goal; red card, Fernandes penalty and \u0160e\u0161ko winner. Top three<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7166,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[465,179,969],"tags":[1305,317,342],"class_list":["post-7167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crystal-palace","category-manchester-united","category-premier-league","tag-bench-selection","tag-benjamin-sesko","tag-bruno-fernandes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7167","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=7167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}