In their goalless draw at home today versus Liverpool, Manchester United suffered through a nightmarish first half which saw interim manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer forced to make all three of his substitutions before halftime. In addition to all the players who left injured, Marcus Rashford suffered an ankle injury and stayed on, playing through the pain and hobbling around.
Ander Herrera, Juan Mata and Jesse Lingard (who was rushed back from injury in order to play in this one) all got hurt and left before the first 45 minutes was up.
“I have never seen it before, three hamstrings in the first half,” Solskjaer said at his post match news conference.
“Rashy was kicked and did his ankle straight away. We should have taken him off as well — we played with 10-and-a-half but the fans made up for it. There were quite a few fouls on him, and normally you would take him off after five minutes.
“His ankle blew up and he wanted to run it off; Juan and Ander came off; so I hope he’s not damaged himself too much.”
For United, getting a point while being so drastically short-handed (and given how awful the last meeting against the Reds went) has to be considered a victory of sorts. For Liverpool, it was a golden opportunity missed to add some space between themselves and Manchester City in the league title race.
After the match, when the two managers met for the customary hand shake, Klopp apparently (or seemingly if you prefer) used a couple curse words to describe his opinion of how the match turned out.
Jurgen Klopp to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer at full-time: “F****** hell, what a s*** game” ?#MUFC #LFC #MUNLIV pic.twitter.com/E2kS1ILuQ2
— GiveMeSport Football (@GMS__Football) February 24, 2019
“He can have his own opinion,” Solskjaer said.
“We had a good performance — defensively absolutely fantastic.”
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, regularly appears as a guest pundit on WGN CLTV and co-hosts the “Let’s Get Weird, Sports” podcast on SB Nation.
He also contributes sociopolitical essays to Chicago Now. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram. The content of his cat’s Instagram account is unquestionably superior to his.