Manchester United vs Liverpool Match Review

Last season, Rodgers came here and won by the same scoreline, one of those breezy, attacking performances from Liverpool that were commonplace after the turn of the year and which sent David Moyes deeper into despair. Now, nine months on, it is Liverpool for whom the pain seems endless, even on days like these when they created chances and yet opportunity eluded them at every turn.
This was not a vintage Manchester United performance by any measure, but the Louis van Gaal revolution rolls on with a sixth straight victory and a dogged pursuit of Chelsea and Manchester City. If the quality was at times low, the proverbial Sunday league pub team game predicted by Gary Neville, then it was United who remembered at the crucial moments who they were and the standards required.
In their times of difficulty they had the peerless David De Gea to rescue them. Liverpool had a defence that might just have been introduced to one another on the bus to the game: incoherent, disorganised and forced into another unfamiliar formation.

 

Rodgers’ defenders may have been absolved of their errors were it not for the fact that their attack foundered every time at the hands of De Gea, the game’s outstanding player. He made three crucial saves from Raheem Sterling within the first hour and then three more from the substitute Mario Balotelli in the second half, including one with the game at 2-0 that felt decisive.

In attack, United took the chances presented to them and rode their luck at times: Juan Mata’s goal, the second of the three, was clearly offside. Afterwards, Rodgers claimed that his team had created more chances than they had when they won the corresponding fixture last  season and this time had come up against a goalkeeper at the top of his game. But there is more to Liverpool’s demise than pure misfortune.
Van Gaal said that it had been his team’s preparation for the specific challenges of playing Liverpool that had got them through. “It is not for nothing we have scored the way we did,” he said. “You need luck but you can force the luck. We are forcing the luck now. That was not always the case at the start of the season.”