If ever an end justified a means.
Manchester United players on Twitter were quite rightly ridiculed last week for partaking in a painfully transparent marketing ploy. They were asked to promote the Revenant starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy, and did so with mechanical obedience.
On Sunday too they mindlessly carried out orders in the most uninspired way, and it was equally successful in getting an end result. The movie tweets may have been laboured, but they got people talking; similarly, the football was dire but ultimately effective.
Again, Wayne Rooney was the hero in what is in danger of becoming a full-blown comeback. Following his heroics against Newcastle, the England man was again less than awful at Anfield. His goal on the 78th minute proved to be the difference between sh*t and sh*tter.
For so painfully long, Rooney has been shockingly bad. Many have been justifiably writing his footballing obituary for months. But the last few games have proved that reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated. It’s the second coming, of sorts.
But let us be clear, Rooney’s solitary goal was the cherry atop a particularly putrid turdcake. It wasn’t quite 2 hours and 36 minutes of crawling through dirt, fighting off large mammals and eating raw bison liver, but it definitely felt like it.
Louis van Gaal’s side were terrible, but Jurgen Klopp’s men were equally so. The old saying ‘Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience,’ was never truer. This was a golden opportunity missed by the home side.
In a many ways it was the perfect advert for any league other than our own. To say the game was sh*te is an insult to sh*te. It was as if Van Gaal and Klopp went out for a bad curry on Saturday night, squatted over the Anfield pitch, and pebble-dashed the grass with a murder of spicy waste
But when all is said and done, United fans won’t care a jot. There may be bigger concerns in the larger context, but nothing compares to beating your arch-enemy in their own back yard. It is almost sweeter when the points are ill-deserved. It makes rival p*ss bubble harder.
There were no stars, but Rooney produced the single trailer-friendly moment. Parental guidance is advised.
