Hammer horror gives Manchester United the Champions League jitters

T hey’re behind you. No really, they are. For Manchester United, what had looked not so long ago like a gentle jog to the line in the Premier League, maybe even – really, this wasn’t so long ago – some kind of title challenge, has now become a cliffhanger. We have jeopardy here.

Liverpool’s victory over Brentford on Saturday means we have a classic two-horse run-off to the line. And really, this could go any way from here after a limp, muddled and generally uncomfortable 1-0 defeat at the London Stadium, during which relegation-haunted West Ham looked by far the more peppy and coherent team.

West Ham are also, lest we forget, trying to win a European trophy in the middle of their own relegation almost-battle. Thursday brings the first leg of their semi-final in the Europa Conference League against AZ Alkmaar, which despite sounding almost exactly like what a simulation of a computer-generated football club would be doing, is apparently real.

A single season of the Conference League takes one week shy of a year to complete. This thing is vast, massive, tectonic in scale, a footballing ziggurat. It’s beyond human ken, sun-like. Never ever look directly at the Europa Conference League 2022-23.

But West Ham were sprightly, lively and fun here. In Declan Rice, they had the best player on the pitch.

It even seemed fitting that the goal, West Ham’s winner, should have an air of pantomime about it. This was a strange moment. Saïd Benrahma did well to take the ball away from Luke Shaw near the centre-circle, but he had three players around him. This felt like someone lifting the pressure, moving his team up the pitch, just doing something for a bit.

He shot early, a sidefoot plink, rather than an actual shot. Faced with this