One thing that we learnt from Manchester United’s 2-1 victory over Crystal Palace was the fighting spirit and togetherness that the players showed, which from a United fans perspective is brilliant to see.
In the 66th minute of the game against Palace, Antony was on the receiving end of a bad tackle and understandably so the Man United players did not like what Jeffery Schlupp did to the Brazilian, which provoked the altercation between the two teams.
What happened after the tackle from Schlupp on Antony showed that the United players are willing to fight for each other as they had a conformation with the Palace players, where there was pushing and shoving going on, which resulted in Casemiro gating sent off.
Even though Casemiro’s red card puts a dampener on the result, however, it should not distract from the fact that United now have a dressing room who are ready to fight for the badge and their team-mates, which was certainly not the case last season as United legend, Gary Neville described the dressing room as broken on Sky Sports.
However, under Erik ten Hag that has changed, who has rejuvenated the dressing room and if ever we needed proof that the players are fighting for each other, the club and the manager, then it was the incident on Saturday as we saw all 10 players rushing to .
A new angle of the brawl that led to Casemiro’s red card. 🎥
— UtdDistrict (@UtdDistrict) February 4, 2023
Speaking in an interview to the Times, Fred, who was in the melee between the two sides, said that the United manager has wrote a message on the dressing-room wall saying: “Always do what you can to help your partner” [via The Times].
However, even though you do not want to see a confrontation like that regularly and you would not see a manager coming out disregarding it, it can serve as a good indicator of how healthy the team spirit within the group is, and speaking after the game ten Hag said that “you have to stick together and stand up for each other” [via Daily Mail].
“Yes, we had some warnings about our team reacting like this, but you have to do it,’ he said. ‘You have to protect each other. We can’t cross lines but we have to stick together and stand up for each other” [via Daily Mail].
Come Wednesday against Leeds United and the other games that United have, the players will need to show that fighting spirit and togetherness if they are to help United achieve their objectives and win trophies as United are currently the only English side who are left in all four competitions.