Manchester United fans make their midfield solution clear during Brighton win

Manchester United’s players might have been looking to the technical area for solutions to their poor first-half performance against Brighton, but 25 yards down the touchline Paul Pogba was doing a bit of freelance coaching to try and fix the issues.

This was a vital three points for United but it didn’t look likely in a first 45 minutes in which they were comprehensively outplayed by the Seagulls and once again lost the midfield battle.

Fixing the centre of the pitch is proving as difficult for Ralf Rangnick as it was for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and when the interim manager signalled for United to shift into a 4-2-3-1 midway through the first half, with Scott McTominay and Fred as a double pivot, it felt like stepping back in time.

United’s midfield had given up plenty of space in a 4-3-3 so there might have been some sense in the switch, but the issues were less to do with structure and more to do with quality.

For Fred, this was one of those games where his passing range makes you think he will never be the answer to these problems. The Brazilian deserves to be cut some slack - this was his first game back after suffering from Covid - and he was playing well in January, but time and again he coughed up possession with wayward passes.

One simple short pass in the first half was so far away from a teammate there was probably a United shirt in the crowd that was closer to it. For all that he offers in terms of pressing, Fred’s passing has to improve if he’s going to be a fulcrum in United’s midfield when they finally rouse themselves for a title challenge.

So having spent some of the first half trying to tell his colleagues to close the spaces between midfield and attack, Pogba came on to try and sort it out on the pitch