Approximately 125 miles in length and 35 miles in width, the Danakil Depression is a plain located at the northernmost point of the Afar Triangle in Ethiopia. It was formed in the Horn of Africa by the divergence of three tectonic plates and is situated 410 feet below sea level; its temperatures are constant throughout the year, making it the warmest location on Earth. Despite the 1974 discovery of Lucy, Australopithecus afarensis, a fossil dating back 3.2 million years, which led some to speculate that the location may have been the cradle of humanity, its salt lakes are now regarded as the most desolate locations on the planet.
Or, at least that was the case until Saturday, when additional evidence surfaced indicating that Manchester United is the most desolate environment on the planet, devoid of imagination, creativity, optimism, and pleasure. Paleoanthropologists assert that fossil evidence of ancient life, even grandeur, can be found in that location as well. However, any rare extremophilic microorganisms would be confined to the kitchens.
United have gone four games without a goal for the first time since autumn 1992. If the drought continues against Aston Villa on Boxing Day, they’ll have scored less out of five than the club’s hygiene rating. They have won one of their past seven. The last time they lost this many games before Christmas was 1931. But it’s not just about results and statistics; it’s about how drab, how weary, how uninspired they appear. Alejandro Garnacho scuffed a couple of efforts straight at Alphonse Areola and worked a couple of crossing opportunities, and Kobbie Mainoo hit a low grubber the keeper shoveled wide – and that was it.
The oddity of United this season is not so much that they have been bad – that has become familiar enough over the past decade. It’s that they’ve been bad in two completely different ways. In Europe – at least before the home defeat to Bayern that was the second match of this run of four without a goal – they’ve been hysterical, scoring hatfuls, letting in even more, a rip-roaring, rambunctious rollercoaster of raucousness; domestically, they’ve just been dull, a faded Ferris wheel of frustration. No side in the top three-quarters of the table has scored fewer goals than them.
But the question of how United’s Champions League group had been like that, and their league form like this, was only one of a number raised by this game. How did Erik Ten Hag’s Ajax play football like that, when his United looked like this? Which leads to the lesser mysteries of the individual form of just about every member of that side since. None have gone on to hit the heights that might have been expected of them; although at least there is reassurance that the first to end up in the great debilitator that is Old Trafford, Donny van de Beek, has endured the most precipitous decline.
How could it be that West Ham’s bench cost about £40m more than United’s? How could a side that began the season with a pair of center-backs who had won the past two World Cups now be fielding a 35-year-old who they had offloaded eight years ago in Jonny Evans and a 19-year-old former France Under-16 international made his first-team debut in Willy Kambwala?
How can it be that Jarrod Bowen has scored more this season than the entire United starting XI here? What on earth has happened to Marcus Rashford? How could anybody think Antony was worth £82m? How long before Mainoo is dragged down to the same hopeless level as the rest, as it appears Rasmus Højlund has been? And how long can this go on?
West Ham did not even have to be especially good to beat them. When Bowen had a header tipped over by André Onana, it felt like coming across a withered shrub in the wilderness: unremarkable anywhere else, but thrillingly unexpected here.
Even more peculiarly, Onana, when presented with a one-on-one opportunity, failed to experience one of his untimely dematerializations, which contributed to the opening goal. Regrettably, his persistent display of emotion resulted in the ball being deflected back to Bowen, who then collected it into the net. United have become, if not entirely unfortunate, a team to which ill fortune tends to fall.
Ten Hag discussed the significance of the opening goal and the number of goal-scorers on his squad. However, the source of such an all-encompassing absence of confidence, vitality, and imagination is difficult to discern. A sense of despondency pervades the atmosphere, suggesting a managerial dead end, if only because clubs tend to replace their managers when their performance reaches this level. It appears that Ten Hag is approaching the point where he will fall prey to the United malaise once more.
The landscape’s peculiar greens and yellows, the desolation of the Danakil, and the volcanoes all contain a magnificent quality. One similarity between United and the current situation is the possibility of a dire situation.