Højlund's late leveller rescues forlorn United

Better days must lie ahead for Manchester United. Otherwise, things have gone truly pear-shaped.

- John Brewin

Better days must lie ahead for Manchester United. Otherwise, things have gone truly pear-shaped. A day where their fans lived vicariously through hopes of Tottenham delaying Liverpool's title celebrations and Nottingham Forest stopping City winning another FA Cup counts as a ground-zero ebb, even considering United's decline and fall. Rescuing a point from 10-man Bournemouth might have arrested some of the doom but probably not for too long.

Perhaps United's team spirit, that which carried them past Lyon in the Europa League, is evidencing itself, though far more than that is required. As with Lyon, it took an opposing red card - Evanilson, a tad unluckily - to add momentum to a muddle.

Reports of Ruben Amorim playing the kids before Athletic Club were proven exaggerated, his selection as strong as can be expected from the Frankenstein-like horror of United's bolted-together squad. With Ernesto Valverde's Athletic in mind, Amorim was running a case study against a team of a similar style, coached by a Basque bred by the same club. It didn't go too well. Even if this group somehow lifts a European trophy, it will surely be broken up for scrap. Sir Jim Ratcliffe, sometime renewables enthusiast, was watching on.