After a couple of surprising results against Sheffield United and Arsenal in recent weeks, Manchester United stormed back into form against a depleted Southampton, smashing 9 goals past them at Old Trafford on 2 February in the Premier League. United won 9-0 on the night against a hapless Saints.
The result puts Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s Manchester United level on points at the top of the table with arch-rivals Manchester City, who however have two games in hand.
The Saints were forced to play almost the entirety of the game with 10 men after debutant Alexandre Jankewitz was shown a straight red card for a studs-up challenge on Scott McTominay just 82 seconds into the match. Bednarek
Defender Aaron Wan-Bissaka opened the scoring in the 18th minute with Marcus Rashford and Edinson Cavani adding one each alongside Jan Bednarek’s own goal in the first half. Bednarek would be sent off later in the game with 4 minutes to go for bringing down Martial in the box as Southampton finished with 9 men on the pitch.
Anthony Martial found the back of the net twice in the second half while McTominay, Bruno Fernandes and Daniel James too scored to hand the visitors their second 9-0 defeat under manager Ralph Hasenhüttl.
"We shared the goals between the players. When the game starts like it does, it's always if you can get the first goal as we have seen so many examples of 10 men closing up shop and getting a draw," Solskjaer told BT Sport after the match.
"We've been waiting for them to show the magic and it was a night for them to go and enjoy it. We've not had many times where we could just enjoy the second half.
"You get lots of confidence from a performance like this, scoring goals is always good for a team."
In the process of the 9-0 win, Rashford also overtook the legendary Frenchman Eric Cantona’s goal tally for the club with his 83rd strike.
"It's always good to score lots of goals and we're happy, it's three points we have needed, we dropped some points in the last few games and needed to get back to winning ways, which we've done," Rashford said.
"We just needed to be as simple as possible, keep moving, be positive. It's easy to take your foot off the gas but we didn't want to do that. We went out in the second half the same as the first. The first half set the tone for us but it's about keeping a positive attitude and keep scoring goals."
On overtaking Cantona, he added: "He was a top player who has done so much for this club. So I'm pleased, but for me, I just want to score more goals and help the team."
There have been only three scorelines of 9-0 in the history of the Premier League and Manchester United have been on the right side of that twice (1995, vs Ipswich). The other was in 2019 when Southampton lost by the same score against Leicester City at St. Mary’s.
United scored 4 goals in the first half of a Premier League match for the second time this season, also doing so against Leeds. This is also the first time since 1997/98 that they have scored four or more in the opening period of two matches in a season.
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