I think what is also important is to see Manchester United's absolute performance and with their 75 points last season they were doing good I think. It wasn't impressive, but Manchester United benefitted from many of the toughest competitors to struggle so hard. Tottenham, Chelsea and Liverpool did so bad that they made it easy for Manchester United to be ahead of them. If the strongest teams in the Premier League perform on a high level, then it would be much harder for Manchester United to finish in the top four. I don't know what they are lacking so far to take their game truly to the next level, but I thought that their team is strong enough to compete with everyone. But a first analysis shows that they almost failed against Wolverhampton, then lost their game against Tottenham and now almost tied a game against Nottingham Forest despite being one man down with almost half an hour to go. I think this isn't what they've been hoping for so far.
That's what I mean and sometimes every top team in the English league has a bad moment at the start of the season and maybe also influenced by some mid or bottom teams who play with high intensity. But when the games are almost half a season, usually teams that are far from the level of the top teams will lose consistency and one by one they will lose points from each match. Manchester United may not be one of them and there are other big teams who are also experiencing the same thing and we can see from the results of the three matches that have taken place. In the previous three matches Ten Hak's team had difficulty keeping pace with the matches against Wolverhampton, Tottenham, and most recently Nottingham Forest.
I highlight the front line because they don't have a centre-forward and so far have place Marcus Rasford and Anthony Martial ineffective and even though Anthony Martial is a centre-forward however his performance was below the level required by Manchester United. On the other hand, we may also see that in the previous three matches the performance of the midfield and defenders has also been inconsistent so far, so Ten Hak must immediately find a solution to this problem.
Yes but lacking a centre-forward doesn't really come as a surprise for them as they had enough time to find a proper player for that position if Ten Haag wanted it.
But this is exactly the problem that three games in a row were problematic. When they win the first game against Wolverhampton at home and in their own stadium Wolverhampton has more chances than they had, the whole team should know that something must be changed.
That game is then followed by a loss and a true reality check against Tottenham. Still not enough to have all the warning signals shining deep red? This is what I think is their biggest problem. They don't learn from past experiences. The game against Nottingham Forst could have been a draw as well and then they would already be in trouble also in terms of the number of points they would have had then. Now it still looks ok, but everyone who had a closer look at the three games knows that Manchester United is still not really ready for this.