MUTV Group Chat: Good start vital for United

The Reds’ opening match of the new campaign was due to be a trip to Burnley on the weekend of 12/13 September, but it has been postponed given United’s extended 2019/20 season due to our European run.

Therefore, we’ll actually begin our 29th Premier League campaign by hosting Crystal Palace the following week. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side then face a trip to Brighton & Hove Albion, before Jose Mourinho brings his Tottenham Hotspur side to Old Trafford on 3 October ahead of an international break.

Speaking on the latest Group Chat video, former United players Ben Thornley, David May, Wes Brown and Danny Webber all agreed that our opening fixtures will be hugely significant.

“I think it’s extremely important, no matter who you’re playing, that you get off to a good start because you’ve got to envisage that teams like Liverpool and Man City will get off to a good start,” explained Thornley. 

“You don’t want, by October, with the fixtures we’ve got, to then be playing catch-up. As much as they are winnable fixtures, it will be in the back of their minds that they suffered defeat in the first two [corresponding games] last season and we have to see the momentum going from where we finished.”

“I think Ben’s hit the nail on the head, you’ve got to get off to a good start,” Maysie agreed.  “After week one, we’ll already be three points behind by not playing a game!

"It’s important and I think all [of the first] three games, you’d expect us to win. Spurs will be tough, we know that, but the first two, if you have any aspirations of getting off to a good start, I don’t think you could have picked two better games.”

For Brown, the need to come away with nine points from the opening three matches scheduled is made even more pressing given our tough run of fixtures in October, which include a trip to Newcastle United, matches against Chelsea and Arsenal and the start of our Carabao Cup and Champions League campaigns.

“We need to get everything from September because October is unbelievable,” said the former defender. "And it’s my birthday [month]!

“The first two games… I mean, we want to start off well. We haven’t done it for a while. We want to be up there straight away. Like you say, we’re a week behind everyone anyway.

“But when we get to that Tottenham game, we want to have six points, we want to be going into October near the top and making sure everyone knows we mean business this season. We need to do that by making a good start."

After our strong end to the 2019/20 Premier League season, Webber is hopeful Ole’s men will continue that form into the upcoming campaign, but also stressed the importance of not taking sides from the bottom half of the table lightly.

“We want to make sure we get into a winning habit and that, every game, we want to win, it doesn’t matter who the opposition is,” he added. 

“You look at our last three or four years and you’d say the teams like Crystal Palace and Brighton, we’ve not performed well against. As fans, you walk away from the stadium a bit deflated.

“Post-lockdown we did very well and we put people to the sword. As long as we come out of the traps like we did post-lockdown, we could put those teams to bed and start getting points on the board.”

Get ready for next season. Our 2020/21 home and away kits are available now from United Direct.