Recollect the last time you slipped – a fall, stumble, anything. It’s probably easier to remember what led to it or how it ended, but what about the fraction of a second during the slip, the moments between your balance giving way and your body coming to rest either through support or on the ground?
There is a fleeting feeling of panic, a fear of physical harm. Your heart-rate shoots up and you anticipate hurt before there is actual contact. All this while, these mere microseconds that the laws of physics have afforded your body, your instincts lead your limbs to scamper for support. In the middle of a slip, your eyes cannot process the changing vertical axis of your line of sight. The responsibility lands on the brain to use all the information it had collected – before the slip – about the surroundings and find the nearest possible support.
A fall is a slip too but one that lasts longer and is far more agonising because your mind now has more time to anticipate the pain that you’re about to feel. Your eyes still take the same amount of time to process vertical change as in a slip, but now it’s a continuous process that never seems to end.
I’m aware that the fall analogy must’ve been used for Manchester United before – seven years is a long time for writers – but what else explains a continuous drop of this magnitude more simply than a free-fall. The 0-2 loss at home against Burnley this Wednesday was United’s eighth of the Premier League season, and a lot like the other seven, there was a sense of painful inevitability about it very soon after kick-off. Burnley were more organised, hungrier and seemed to have a clearer understanding of how to win – unforgivable if you sat on the home dugout at Old Trafford.
That Burnley came with a plan shouldn’t be surprising, but the lack of one by United shouldn’t raise eyebrows either. Over the 24 games United have played this season, rarely have they shown a tactical idea beyond sit-back-and-counter at teams that play high. It worked against Chelsea in August and against City and Spurs in December. Against teams who have understood their patterns and are slightly more conservative, United seem to run into a brick wall.