Home form crucial to Manchester United’s revival

Duty Bound. Lukaku has already started banging in the goals for Utd

Manchester United Europa League triumph camouflaged an alarmingly poor Premier League season. For a team that dominated English football for nearly two decades, sixth is no position to write home about.

A key pitfall for United throughout Jose Mourinho’s first season was wretched home form.

Sorting home form: United won only eight out of nineteen home matches, and drew a further ten games, in the process picking up only thirty four points from games at Old Trafford. It was the first time in several decades that United won more points (35) away from home.

Comparatively, champions Chelsea garnered a massive fifty one points from their Stamford Bridge fortress while Tottenham Hotspur did even better, collecting a record 53 points in their final season at White Hart Lane.
Mourinho was right to point out that the Premier League record champions were a tad unlucky to draw some of those games. But their strikers were also a tad profligate, with lead striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic in particular guilty of squandering chances with his erratic shooting. Addressing a poor shot conversion rate for his strikers should thus be a major preoccupation for Mourinho next season.

More adventure needed: Signing Romelu Lukaku will go a long way towards improving United’s poor returns in front of goal. However, though the big Belgian adds pace, power and panache to Manchester United’s attack, Mourinho must not play him as a lone striker.

In all games at Old Trafford, he must be brave enough to start him along with Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial or Ivan Perisic. Lukaku would certainly benefit more from having Perisic in the side because he is an out and out winger who delivers crosses whereas Martial is, whatever his protestations might be, a striker himself.
Interrelated with the aforementioned point is the need to spread the goals. I am not sure if was by design or default but United players in good striking positions very often passed to Ibrahimovic, who of course emerged club top scorer with 28 goals in all competitions. Seventeen of those came in the Premier League. Unfortunately, no other United player reached double figures in the EPL. Marcus Rashford and Henrikh Mkhitaryan scored eleven each, but many of their goals came in the Europa League and League Cup.

Player management: Finally, Jose Mourinho needs to handle his players better. In the early years of his career, this was arguably his greatest strength. In his time at Porto and first spell at Chelsea, the Portuguese gaffer never, ever criticised his players in public.

He was always deflecting pressure towards himself in order for the players to concentrate on their game. I was therefore very surprised by how often stars like Anthony Martial and Luke Shaw were berated in front of the media. If the rest of United’s squad get as much protection as Paul Pogba enjoyed during a difficult start to his career, the team will go places.
All said, this will be Mourinho’s most difficult season. He usually delivers serious silverware in his second season. He did so at Real Madrid and in his second spell at Chelsea. However, never before has the awash with cash Premier League been as competitive.
The ‘Big Six’ and Everton all feel they have a chance. United players need to apply themselves at one hundred ten percent of their ability if they are to steal a march on their rivals.