Man United 1-0 Newcastle

&c

Newcastle fell to the traditional Boxing Day Old Trafford defeat, losing 1-0 to Man United courtesy of a Dorgu volley midway through the first half.

This particular game fell into the category of "better performance, completely impotent attack", and once Dorgu hit a sweet strike into the corner midway through the first half, you always felt that was game over.

In my BBC prediction for this game I'd gone for an ambitious 3-3 draw, but as it happened we could have played until 2026 without finding the net.

The closest we came, in a game in which we went to Old Trafford and took 16 shots, had two thirds of the ball, attempted more than double the passes of the home team with much better accuracy than them, had more than five times the corners they had, and reduced them to playing a back six (yes, a back six), was a 30-yarder off the bar from the superb Lewis Hall.

Woltemade was again anonymous away from home, Gordon back to his inefficient worst.

Murphy made a decent fist of trying to get balls in the box, but they were inconsistent and nobody was ever likely to be on the end of them anyway.

Tonali was again a shadow of himself and Ramsey's most memorable moment was working a shooting opportunity then tripping over literally nothing.

As in, not even his own feet.

He just fell over.

It seems like we've been saying for weeks now "we're only three points worse off than last season".

The problem is - aside from now being six points worse off - this time last season we'd kicked off a nine-game winning run.

We look entirely incapable of that this season.

The main culprit is the misfiring attack, with absolutely no cohesion between Big Nick and whatever combination of wingers is sent out to run the ball out of play or pass safely back to the full backs.

General patterns of play, however, are poor all over the field, with none of the pressing intensity we've become used to.

Until we work out how to fix that, we look a long way from being able to stake a claim for a spot in one of the lesser European competitions next season, which surely now is the main aim for the season.

A Champions League spot next term is a pipe dream.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Wissa start in the huge midweek game at Burnley, though I'm sceptical as to whether that's enough to transform our play and our fortunes, on the road especially.