Manchester United's Difficult Season So Far Cannot Be Blamed on Luck Alone

Another profoundly frustrating draw has left Manchester United in even deeper trouble in their quest for Champions League qualification. What was an eight-point gap behind the top four has become nine.

With Liverpool and Manchester City both losing, a win at Goodison Park, obviously, would have narrowed it to seven. This latest draw was the second in the recent spell to serve up this specific brand of frustration.

Against Stoke City, Burnley and West Ham United, the Red Devils were much the better side and created significantly more and better chances than the opposition. The Everton game, though, had more in common with the recent 1-1 draw with Arsenal at Old Trafford.

United were, for much of the game, the better side. In both games, that dominance eventually turned into a narrow lead, but after neither of these two games could they really decry a slew of missed chances.

Against Arsenal, they could have at least claimed that their opposition did little to create opportunities of its own, but that was not the case against Everton. The Toffeemen outshot United, 13-10, and got six shots on target to the Red Devils' two. The most damning statistic from United's perspective is that their last shot came in the 66th minute.

Jose Mourinho's handling of the latter part of the game ultimately cost United dearly. First off, he brought Marcus Rashford on for Anthony Martial. That substitution was emblematic of his general insistence on like-for-like changes.

Even as a like-for-like change, it was a pretty serious mistake. First off, Martial had been a clear and present danger to Everton throughout the game, and losing him always threatened to take some of the life out of United's attack.

Secondly, he is a safer pair of hands—or rather, feet—than Rashford from a defensive perspective. Martial worked tirelessly on the left flank for Louis van Gaal and has played enough games there to gain a significant appreciation for the art of defending.

Rashford, on the other hand, is a new convert to the wings and has understandably struggled with issues around positioning.

It was the man he was supposed to have been covering who put in the cross for Arsenal's equaliser at Old Trafford, for example. That is not to pin the blame for that goal entirely on the youngster, but merely to point out that it is an issue.

Bringing on Rashford for Ibrahimovic, on the other hand, could have given United an incredibly mobile front three, had Henrikh Mkhitaryan stayed on the pitch. With the way the pattern of the game was going, a counter-attacking force like that could have been really effective.

Instead, though, Martial came off for Rashford, and an even worse substitution was to follow. The power of hindsight is all-knowing, of course, and perhaps, somewhere in an alternate universe, Marouane Fellaini cleared a Romelu Lukaku shot off the line or something.

However, the moment Fellaini took off his training top and it became clear that he was about to emerge, it felt like a regressive, risky step. Even without hindsight, was there really anyone watching who was actually surprised when he marked his 100th appearance for the club by clumsily clattering into Idrissa Gueye in the penalty area?

The full ire of United's support cannot just be directed at Fellaini, of course. He was, essentially, just guilty of being Marouane Fellaini, of doing what Marouane Fellaini does. It was the manager who decided he was a good fit to see out the game who made the mistake.

Some blame must be shared by the profligacy and underperformance of some star players before that which meant United had such a slender lead to protect. Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored a brilliant goal, of course, but in the first 30 minutes of the game he misplaced seven of his 16 attempted passes—a 44 percent failure rate.

Over the course of the entire game Paul Pogba misplaced 27 per cent of his, meaning he gave the ball back to Everton on 17 different occasions. Only Martial and Mkhitaryan looked lively and on their games, and they both made mistakes, too.

Ibrahimovic only got one of his three shots on target, the same rate as Martial. Only Antonio Valencia, Pogba and Martial managed to register a key pass.

After the game Mourinho said, per BBC Sport:

"

We are not getting the results we deserve. We are getting draws but deserving victory.

Opposition are leaving the stadium super happy with points they don't deserve and we are leaving the stadium with a feeling we deserved more.

"

That has generally been true, but not against Everton. This draw was self-inflicted frustration. If the manager is truly left cursing the fickle hand of fate after that one, he will miss an opportunity to learn some valuable lessons.

Indeed, lumping this in with games in which United genuinely played well enough to deserve a win undermines a generally valid argument.

In truth, as well as the odd game in which United have played very well and got the result the performance merited, United's season so far has been a combination of bad luck and genuinely poor performances.

Generously, the Everton game was somewhere between the two, but in the cold light of day it must surely be closer to the latter than the former.

Both this game and the Arsenal draws could perhaps be argued to sit in either camp, but for the sake of argument the total of points United have lost out from games in either category runs thus:

It has reached the point where even if they had acquired all the points from games they "deserved" to have won, they would still not be in a Champions League spot.

Mourinho has a swathe of issues to deal with. He has to continue to reshape the squad—that Fellaini has played 100 times for United tells a pretty stark story in terms of quality. He has to find some consistency in terms of results and tweaks to ensure poor performances are kept to a minimum.

But at this point he also has to find a way to ensure that not qualifying for the Champions League this season does not become a disaster for his time in charge. Qualification felt like an outside bet after the draw with Arsenal. The draw with West Ham compounded that, and the Everton draw made it feel like it would take a small miracle.

Anything other than a win over Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday will be a death knell for those already fragile chances. United have to overhaul two of Spurs, Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea.

Of course none of those sides have been perfect this season. All have endured swings in performances and results. But they are seasoned campaigners at the top end of the table. Overhauling one with a nine-point deficit at this stage of the season would be a challenge. Overhauling two will require a monumental effort and a level of consistency that there is simply no reason to expect.

We have already reached the stage where some fans are calling for Mourinho's head, as ridiculous as that seems. The club need to ensure they recognise the size of the task he was facing and the improvements which have been made and not give into such obviously knee-jerk reactions.

Mourinho needs to find a way to keep his head in the face of the pressure of underperformance and the vast amount of criticism that is heading his way.

Parallels have been drawn with Chelsea's collapse last season, but this feels very different. There were not too many games in that run where Chelsea had played well and been unlucky, and of course, theirs was the collapse of then-champions rather than the stuttering rebuild that this season represents.

"

Marouane Fellaini has played 100 times for Man United. How many of those have been good performances?

— Paul Santacast (@UtdRantcast) December 5, 2016"

It is a different challenge, then, but one which Mourinho has to handle much better—on a personal level—than he handled at Chelsea.

There are cup competitions left to offer some kind of glory, and the possibility of a surge up the table certainly exists, but neither are anything like a sure thing. It is going to be a long season from here on out. He cannot spend the whole of it blaming luck, especially when the causes are so obviously more complicated than that.

Much more than just the outcome of this season depends on that.

Advanced data per WhoScored.com.