IAN LADYMAN: Manchester United are shamefully poor… and Liverpool STILL can’t beat them

The last action of another remarkable game between English football’s fiercest rivals was a shot from Liverpool’s Harvey Elliott that was saved by Manchester United goalkeeper Andre Onana.

Two minutes earlier, Elliott’s team-mate Luis Diaz had half-volleyed over from seven yards. They were shots No 27 and 28 of Liverpool’s afternoon and No 86 and 87 of the total that Jurgen Klopp’s team have racked up over three games against United in all competitions this season.

Those numbers speak of domination and accurately so. Yet Liverpool have won none of those three games and the impact on Klopp’s final season may yet be more profound than he would dare admit at this stage.

Klopp was in shoulder-shrugging mode after this one. These things happen. You can’t win them all. A point at Old Trafford is never a bad result. And so on and so forth.

But this is arguably the worst United team of the 11 dreadful seasons that have followed Sir Alex Ferguson’s final Premier League title triumph in 2013.

Erik ten Hag’s version are a weak, passive, fearful bunch. At times during this game they were so bad, so utterly incapable of playing any kind of intelligent and progressive football, that it was hard to believe what we were watching.

Much of the last decade has been regressive, but a team that ends a half of football at home to Liverpool having failed to take a shot, while the opposition have had 15 (that’s one every three minutes), is in danger of taking this great football team to depths previously unvisited even by the likes of David Moyes, Louis van Gaal, Jose Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

Yet Liverpool could not beat them. In fact they came perilously close to losing to them once again. Liverpool experienced a kind of weird paralysis in the final third, the kind of mental confusion that sees Mo Salah miss open goals and Darwin Nunez pass to people who don’t exist while failing to see those who do. That is what this game was about.

United and some of their more desperate supporters and indeed their manager and players will try to dress up this result as proof that something is stirring at Old Trafford, that a fire still burns in the bellies of those in red.

But that’s rubbish. It’s nonsense. Ten Hag’s is a dreadful football team that continues to get worse under him. Days such as this — with minority shareholder Sir Jim Ratcliffe in attendance — will not work in his favour as decisions are reached over his future. They will work against him.

Ratcliffe and his sidekick Sir Dave Brailsford don’t necessarily know football but they do know sport and what they will have recognised once again during this game was failing after failing after failing.

The only good thing about this from a United point of view was the result — a blow somehow landed on the solar plexus of a vastly superior opponent — and when that is regularly the case then you are in trouble.

United can occasionally feed off chaos, noise and adrenaline. They did it in last month’s FA Cup quarter-final against Liverpool and they did it again here. They don’t know how to control matches, though. They don’t know how to play to a plan. They got lucky here and Ratcliffe will not allow that to last beyond the summer. He simply can’t.

So once again, Liverpool wake up with those burning questions smouldering at the front of their brains. How? Why? And once again the answers are to be found in failures of calmness, composure and intelligence.

Klopp’s team played beautifully in the first half on Sunday — from tee to green, to steal a golfing term. They controlled possession and passed the ball strategically and with accuracy.

Like just about every other team worth its salt across England and Europe, they know how to play United. Let them have the ball in their own half. Don’t press them over-enthusiastically. And then just wait. And wait. Because eventually United will give it to you and then you are in business.

And Liverpool were in business, repeatedly so. They just couldn’t score. United goalkeeper Onana began the afternoon by saving well from Dominik Szoboszlai and he was impressive all day. The Cameroon international has proved himself worthy of the position over the course of a season that began traumatically for him. There were some brave and resolute last-ditch blocks from United defenders, too. At left back, Aaron Wan-Bissaka was typically wasteful in possession but doughty when he wasn’t.

Still, though, Liverpool should have taken the equation out of their opponents’ hands and it was impossible not to think that the reason they didn’t was due in part to the psychological impact of a Cup tie criminally tossed away here last month.

So much of what happened here was reminiscent of the game won 4-3 in extra time by United. The way Liverpool players delivered their shots without conviction. The poor final-pass selection. The failure to turn attacking overloads into clear chances.

The only thing that set this game apart was that Liverpool didn’t lose it. They found a way back. They equalised to turn disaster into disappointment. They finished the afternoon on the front foot. They deserve credit for that and it meant that the Stretford End’s serenading of Klopp with ‘Jurgen’s cracking up’ as he left the field lacked a little of its intended resonance.

Still, though, this could prove to be a pivotal day. Nobody should be in any doubt as to how bad this United team are. They are shamefully poor. How they reside in sixth place in the Premier League is a mystery.

But as Klopp prepares to leave Anfield next month, it is hard to look away from the damage quite possibly done by two league games against the old enemy and one in the FA Cup.

It’s 87 shots, remember. 87 shots. The more you say it, the worse it sounds.