United Salvage Draw at Fulham Despite Poor Performance
United escaped Craven Cottage with a point. That was about the only thing they escaped with.
A late, heavily deflected strike from Matheus Cunha salvaged a 1-1 draw against Fulham and stopped the slide of two straight defeats turning into three. It papered over nothing. The performance beneath it was so flat, so lifeless, that one of the club’s most influential voices tore into them on live television.
Lisandro Martinez’s early own goal had set the tone for a chaotic, disjointed display. United looked rattled, then resigned. They chased shadows, then stopped chasing altogether. Only when Cunha’s effort looped in late on did the scoreline finally reflect the balance of chances, but by then the damage to reputations was done.
Gary Neville, on Sky Sports co-commentary, did not bother with diplomacy. He went for the jugular: the players’ effort, their running, their basic work without the ball.
“I've never seen a Man Utd team walk out of possession as much as that,” he said, incredulous at what he was watching in west London. He had already branded them “mannequins” on air, and he doubled down, stunned by how often United’s players simply ambled as Fulham built attacks.
What really irked him was Michael Carrick’s defence of the team’s energy levels. The manager insisted there was “nothing wrong” with the intensity. Neville thought otherwise – and said so.
“Michael has got to stop defending them,” he insisted. “I get why he's defending them; he's loyal, he wants his players to work for him, and obviously there's a long way to go in the season.”
That loyalty, Neville suggested, has a limit. Publicly, Carrick backs them. Privately, Neville is convinced the message is very different.
“Michael is of course saying something different to us than he is saying privately. That would've really worried me. People will ask questions about him, but he knew that when he took the job. But there's no panic in that sense - no one is putting pressure on Carrick - but if those types of performances continue, he will find himself in a lot of trouble. They've got to work harder than that for him.”
This wasn’t a one-off. The trip to Fulham came on the back of a bruising league defeat to Manchester City and a Carabao Cup collapse against Brighton. Three games, the same accusation: United simply not doing the dirty work.
Neville’s analysis zoomed in on those long spells without the ball, when Fulham were allowed to dictate. United’s shape sagged, the press never really triggered, and players drifted rather than hunted.
“Both teams were the same. I called them mannequins. I've never seen a United team walk around as much as that,” Neville said, describing a side stripped of the edge that once defined the shirt. “No alertness, no aliveness. No 'on your toes'. You should always be on your toes.”
The most damning line came when he assessed that crucial period after half-time, when United needed a reaction and instead offered surrender.
“I'm always very careful to say that, but in those first 15 minutes of that second half, Man Utd and generally for the first 60 minutes, were a genuine disgrace. Nowhere near good enough without the ball.”
The late Cunha equaliser spared United the humiliation of another defeat on the scoreboard. It did nothing to soften Neville’s verdict. Or the questions now hanging over Carrick’s squad.
A point at Craven Cottage keeps the table looking salvageable. The real issue is whether United can find a pulse off the ball before the season’s problems become something far harder to rescue than a single game.
