Weekend recap: Costly injuries spoil Man Utd vs Liverpool, City win the Carabao Cup

We continue our recap of this weekend’s football and look at how Liverpool, Manchester City and Manchester United did over the weekend.

Liverpool

Liverpool returned back to the top of the Premier League table after their 0-0 draw with Manchester United at Old Trafford on Sunday. In complete honesty, their game against Man United was very poor. There were as many players substituted because of injuries as there were shots on target. Liverpool will feel particularly disappointed as Man United were forced into making all three of their substitutes before half-time. Even though they lost Roberto Firmino themselves, they were in better shape than their rivals.

They’re now one point ahead of Manchester City and six ahead of Tottenham, with everyone having played the same amount of games. Being top of the league isn’t a bad thing, but Liverpool will be disappointed that their lead isn’t more. A convincing win yesterday would have given them a real boost in their quest for their first league title since 1990. They’re still top and still have it in their own hands, but it feels as if Man City will now be confident of catching them.

The Reds haven’t been playing well at all lately and need to sort their form out. They’ve won just one of their last five games in all competitions: a 3-0 win against Bournemouth, with four draws: against Leicester, West Ham, Bayern Munich and Man United.

Manchester City

Man City won the first available trophy of the season when they beat Chelsea on penalties in the Carabao Cup final at Wembley on Sunday. Winning a trophy is always welcome, but they won’t spend too much time celebrating this one. The Carabao Cup isn’t a huge achievement for a side as good as Man City, and they’ll be getting straight back to work as they attempt to win more silverware. There’s still talk of them going on to win the quadruple, but that’s highly unlikely. Being that successful can’t be expected.

They need to get straight back to it now and try to overtake Liverpool in the Premier League. Their next game is against West Ham at the Etihad on Wednesday. That should be a routine win for them, even though West Ham do have some talented players. That could be another hammering.

After watching Liverpool’s poor performance against Man United on Sunday, Man City will feel confident of being able to overtake them. They’ll feel that there’s no reason they can’t make it back-to-back Premier League titles. They’ll also continue to fight for the Champions League and FA Cup.

Manchester United

Man United drew 0-0 against Liverpool at Old Trafford on Sunday. As mentioned, it was a very poor game. But United have some excuses for their performance, as they were really thrown off by some very unfortunate injuries. They went into the game without Anthony Martial and Nemanja Matic, while Jesse Lingard could only make the bench. Just 21 minutes into the game, Ander Herrera had to come off, and he was replaced by Andreas Pereira. This left United with an inexperienced midfield, with Scott McTominay and Paul Pogba taking up the other two positions. But they all stepped up and played well.

After just 25 minutes, Juan Mata had to be replaced. Jesse Lingard came on in his place, but he wasn’t fully fit either. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s plan for him may have been to introduce him with 10 or 15 minutes remaining at the end of the game, not 65, as he had only just recovered from a hamstring injury. Lingard lasted less than 20 minutes before being replaced by Alexis Sanchez. Marcus Rashford was also clearly struggling, but he had to stay on as United had no more substitutes left. It was a very unfortunate situation for them.

All things considered, United did quite well in this game. Their game-plan and rhythm were lost with these injuries, and they couldn’t play how they would have liked. While they would have liked to put a real dent in Liverpool’s title challenge and win the game, they won’t be too disappointed with the point.

United have dropped out of the top four now, and trail Arsenal by one point. They’re well in the mix for that final Champions League place, though. They’re off to Selhurst Park to play Crystal Palace on Wednesday in their next game.

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This article was written by PremPlace. You can see their website by clicking here.