Manchester United against Middlesbrough has come and gone. Manchester United concluded their first match after the winter break with a defeat to Middlesbrough at Old Trafford. What a abysmal match.

First off, I want to make it clear I do not blame Ralf Rangnick or Anthony Elanga. Ragnick picked the best team today, our players just failed to deliver. I don’t blame Elanga at all because asking a 19 year old to score a sudden death penalty is a lot. I sincerely want the best for the young lad, and hope he isn’t too hard on himself. Now onto the match analysis:

Stellar first half, abysmal rest.

The first half belonged to us. We were playing beautiful, fluid football. My only complaint from the first half is we should have been 3-0 up. The Ronaldo penalty miss was tragic but, hey, I thought we would score anyway.

Jadon Sancho, man what a baller. I hope and cannot wait to see him grow.

Now the second half. I’m going to be 100 percent honest, I didn’t think we played that bad, we just weren’t clinical and couldn’t finish at all. That is on Ronaldo, Bruno and Marcus. They all had key chances to put us up and couldn’t get it done.

Now the worst offender besides our forwards forgetting how to put the ball in goal: VAR
In what way does an attacking player knock the ball down with his left hand and pass it to his teammate to score and it stands?

The fact that VAR did not overturn that is abysmal, and so was how we played from that point on. Now the only possible trophy we could win this year is the Champions League. We just got knocked out by Middlesbrough, so how will we fare against Atletico Madrid? PSG? Bayern Munich? Liverpool? City?

Onto Burnley, but with Ronaldo turning 37 tomorrow and Champions League football barely in the balance, do we start worrying now?