The inevitability of Manchester United’s chaotic openness and Liverpool’s

For anyone who has followed football for a decent period of time, the events of the second half at Old Trafford yesterday somehow felt inevitable.

That is simply how football works — when one side is absurdly dominant in the first half but fail to put the game to bed, it seems they always live to regret it. Sure enough, Manchester United scored with their first shot, from 50 yards, and then went 2-1 up with another excellent goal out of nothing.

This meant Liverpool were playing catch-up, which was ridiculous considering how good they’d been in the first half. They attempted 15 shots compared to United’s zero before half-time and that difference of 15 is the third-biggest margin of any first half in this Premier League campaign. Liverpool’s meeting with Newcastle on New Year’s Day was 18-1 on first-half shots and Manchester City’s against Manchester United last month was 18-2. On that basis, it shouldn’t be surprising that Liverpool had plenty of shots against Erik ten Hag’s side.

Judging by a combination of their recent performances and looking at their starting XI on paper, United had three obvious weaknesses here. The first was down their right flank, where right-winger Alejandro Garnacho is a little sloppy defensively, Diogo Dalot is tasked with pushing into crossing positions and can leave space in behind, and Willy Kambwala, at 19, is a talented but raw right-sided centre-back.

Here, five minutes in, Dalot and Kambwala both find themselves midway inside the opposition half. Andy Robertson feeds the ball past them, allowing Darwin Nunez to attack the exposed Harry Maguire.

The second issue is that United’s system largely depends on man-marking in midfield, which means their central midfielders have to constantly track the runs of their opposite numbers. And, to be frank, they simply aren’t capable of this. Casemiro, in particular, looks increasingly immobile and on this occasion, two minutes in, simply wasn’t able to keep up with Dominik Szoboszlai for Liverpool’s first chance of the game.

The third problem was the gaps between the lines. Again, this is partly the result of United’s central midfielders being too keen to stick to opponents rather than keeping a good shape. Here, there’s too much distance between defence and midfield, so Luis Diaz can waltz inside into space to receive a pass from Virgil van Dijk.

When he receives the ball, and expects Dalot to be on his back, the Portuguese right-back is instead in a bizarre crouched position, effectively gesturing to his team-mates that he’s been caught between following Diaz’s run and watching the overlap of Robertson, who has advanced beyond Garnacho — not for the last time.

Most of United’s problems stemmed from these issues. Here, when goalkeeper Caoimhin Kelleher plays the ball out to Jarell Quansah, Casemiro and Kobbie Mainoo are both trying to shut down Liverpool’s central midfielders, Wataru Endo and Alexis Mac Allister. That means…