Manchester United salvaged a 3-2 win against Crystal Palace on Monday night.
Palace scored early through Andros Townsend, and doubled their lead just after half-time when Patrick van Aanholt raced through on goal to finish past David de Gea. However, goals from Chris Smalling, Romelu Lukaku and Nemanja Matic earned United three points after a difficult evening at Selhurst Park.
Jose Mourinho’s side were poor for large spells of the match, before rallying towards the end of the game.
There were individual errors for both of Palace’s goals and Paul Pogba was, once again, disappointing. However, the performance of Alexis Sanchez came in for the strongest criticism.
The Chilean was involved in Lukaku’s goal, but otherwise offered little. In the first-half alone, he lost the ball 19 times – 12 of those were misplaced passes.
Alexis Sánchez was dispossessed 4 times in the first half:
• Twice as many times as any other player
• The same amount as every Crystal Palace player combined
— Squawka (@Squawka) March 5, 2018
A past United number seven, Memphis Depay, once lost the ball 32 times in a match against Newcastle.
When Sanchez joined United from Arsenal in January, he wanted to emulate United number sevens of the past, but not Memphis. No way.
On Sky Sports at half-time, Jamie Carragher said Sanchez and Pogba were “like two kids in a schoolyard.”
https://twitter.com/utdxtra/status/970765649965350914
And elsewhere, Sanchez’s performance was heavily criticised.
If Matic had not have won the game in the final minute, there would have been a lot of focus on Sanchez’s display over the coming days.
Man U poor 1st half. Pogba,Lukaku,Sanchez,lingard not in the game. Mourinho big HT Team talk. Palace organised play on the break could be a huge win
— Ray Parlour (@RealRomfordPele) March 5, 2018
https://twitter.com/RatedAubameyang/status/970766360975433728
May be an unpopular opinion but although Sanchez is a world class player on his own, the team looks worse with him in it than it did before without him. Not sure whether it’s him, the tactics or whatever but we did play some beautiful stuff Pre-January. #mufc
— Hesham Bilal-Hafiz (@hesham786) March 5, 2018
Forget Pogba, all I’ve seen Sanchez do since join United is throw his arms about in frustration, misplace passes and post Instagram stories of his dogs set to 1980s American pop music.
— Si Lloyd (@SmnLlyd5) March 5, 2018
Fascinating analysis on Sanchez and Pogba's interplay on MNF there. pic.twitter.com/rEWrAzrzCJ
— Jon (@jonbir90) March 5, 2018
Absolutely abject from United, Pogba and Sanchez especially. Sanchez has been deeply average since joining.
— Alex Shaw (@AlexShawTel) March 5, 2018
Alexis Sanchez. You can take the player out of Arsenal but you can’t take the…
— FootballJOE (@FootballJOE) March 5, 2018
