Manchester United’s great Premier League title challenge of 2026/27 is finally over after awful debuts | OneFootball

Joe Cole might be well-advised to keep his phone on Do Not Disturb for the foreseeable future.

Michael Carrick might not thank his former England and West Ham team-mate for the dressing room wall-adjacent contempt aimed at Hull City before what was widely and erroneously expected to be a season of Derby 2007/08 proportions.

The Manchester United head coach tried to make amends, describing as “ridiculous” the concept that facing promoted clubs in their opening two games constituted a favourable start.

: that There Are No Easy Games In The Premier League, Clive.

Not when Manchester United appear to have expended so much energy trying to frame themselves as the biggest brains in the boardroom that they have seemingly forgotten to actually focus on pitch-based preparations.

It is impressive that they have spent the same amount on a midfield pairing as Spurs invested on Matheus Fernandes alone. As was pointed out frequently last night and in the build-up here, agreeing a deal for Carlos Baleba at £70m when Brighton had previously wanted “Moises Caicedo money” is testament to their patience and willingness to wait for the right player.

But it turns out there is a reason other clubs have allocated those funds and done so early.

Youri Tielemans for about one-third of a Sandro Tonali sounds like a phenomenal idea in theory. In practice, a player whose body “just switched off” at the World Cup and hasn’t undergone much fitness work in pre-season was veritably mauled by the Tigers.

A defence with nothing spent on it looked vulnerable. An attack featuring Patrick Dorgu created almost nothing of note. That Tielemans-Andrey Santos midfield axis lasted 67 minutes before being sacrificed in a double substitution. Manchester United went behind to two set-piece goals in the first half and were handed three-quarters of the ball thereafter, to no avail.

Hull bullied them. Hull outclassed them. Hull beat them. If the curious accusation from Cole, an expert apparently new to the notion of *the play-offs*, was that Sergej Jakirovic’s “have come here through the back door” and into the Premier League, the Tigers were more than happy to barge through the front against precious little resistance.

The Oli McBurnie one-man battering ram will victimise many a defence this season – although the sight of him effortlessly gliding past both Tielemans and Santos in the centre circle on the hour to trigger a rare second-half Hull attack was quite something.

The Scotland forward ploughed one header into the palms of Senne Lammens before a near-post corner pulled at some already remarkably loose Manchester United seams. Harry Maguire holding Noussair Mazraoui as Semi Ajayi slammed his finish into an empty net at a goal-mouth scramble felt sub-optimal.

A painful lack of intensity from the visitors was exposed again when Mohamed Belloumi collected the ball on the edge of the area. His nutmeg embarrassed Tielemans enough to draw a foul from which Regan Slater delivered another cross for Nobel Mendy to make it 2-0.

Manchester United, undone by two goals from centre-halves, conjured one of their best chances when Maguire crossed for Dorgu. It summed up a deeply unimaginative, stale attacking performance.

Marcus Rashford offered some life, movement and pace with his half-time introduction but the damage was done. Hull sat off once they had their goals, safe in the knowledge that neither Carrick nor his players had the requisite skill, intelligence or minerals to break through.

“Are you watching, Joe Cole?” mocked the home supporters, whose cheers at the announcement of the next two trains to Manchester being cancelled only added to the schadenfreude.

If he was, he’ll have been stunned by the composed excellence and gameplan execution of Hull. But Cole, like the rest of us, will have seen this Manchester United display before: slow, slack, thoughtless, lacking energy and inventiveness. .