Amorim rewarded for keeping faith with his eternal optimist

This was a thrilling, bruising game, and even a very funny one at times.

- Barney Ronay

This was a thrilling, bruising game, and even a very funny one at times. Not least in its final significant act with 96 minutes gone, a cross from the right that saw Harry Maguire unmarked in front of goal and wreathed suddenly in the cold, hard spotlight of destiny, but opting instead to smash the ball into the crowd like a man punting a crumpled-up beer can over a factory fence.

The end result was a good draw for Manchester United, which is no small thing, and definitely an improvement on the recent trend for bad defeats. It was probably a good result for Liverpool too after a performance that was spirited at times but some way short of the sunlit stroll of the first half of the season. This point will perhaps mean more by the end than some of those cloudless victories.

From a United perspective it was another wonderful match for Amad Diallo, who didn't always play well, who spent quite a lot of the game writhing in agony or running himself into a state of exhaustion, but produced in the process an exercise in not stopping, chasing the sun to the last breath, and in how to end up having a great time when for quite a long time, it might have looked like a terrible time.

Diallo is above all a hopeful footballer. This was no bad thing at Anfield where his first notable act was to head the ball backwards away from an open goal with 20 minutes gone, leaping, hanging in the air, wrenching his neck and, again, heading the ball back away from an open goal.