Sunday afternoon was a day to forget for the full-back
Manchester United’s hopes of playing Champions League football next season are over.
Another dismal showing saw them draw 1-1 with already-relegated Huddersfield Town on Sunday, meaning they can no longer finish the season inside the top four.
United had taken a lead through Scott McTominay early on in the game. Having failed to build on their lead, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side saw Huddersfield equalise after an hour when Isaac Mbenza capitalised on a mistake from Luke Shaw.
After the game, Shaw received more criticism on Twitter from United supporters who used a 25-second clip of the full-back’s attempts to track back in the second half to highlight a perceived lack of effort.
The footage – which we’re not allowed to embed due to the Premier League’s strict rules about sharing footage of its games – was posted to Twitter by user, @GrayPower3.
It begins just after a United attack has broken down, close to Huddersfield’s area.
The ball is passed past Shaw, who can be seen wearing the number 23 shirt.
As Shaw turns back towards his own half, he is overtaken by Alex Pritchard, who has just made the pass out wide to his teammate.
Shaw then disappears from the shot as Huddersfield burst forward, eventually reappearing seconds later when Pritchard gets the ball back inside the United half.
Back in position, Shaw makes a few attempts to close Huddersfield’s players down in the remaining seconds of the footage, never really getting close to the ball.
The clip has attracted hundreds of retweets in the time since it was posted on Twitter, plenty of United fans critical of Shaw in the replies to it.
‘Didn’t break sweat all game not 1 overlap or 1 decent cross and passed the ball back to Jones about 60 times,’ said Twitter user @ScottRoge8.
‘Not good enough for a while now,’ added @mthwaites49. ‘Just coasting through games.’
United captain Ashley Young dismissed suggestions that United’s players had not put in the required effort levels during the game.
“I can’t fault the effort and the attitude,” Young told Sky after full-time.
“It was all us, especially in the first 20 minutes. It’s tough to take, their goal. We knew we needed other people to help us but we needed to help ourselves and we haven’t done that today. It’s a disappointment.”
United will now close the season at home to Cardiff City next weekend knowing they will play in the Europa League in 2019/2020.
