Saturday round-up: Bayern and Real Madrid on the brink but Manchester United bounce back
While the marquee matches across Europe’s top five leagues may take place today, with Liverpool’s clash with Manchester City headlining the bill, there were some memorable matches from Saturday’s action.
We pick out the best match, individual performance and biggest shock from yesterday’s fixtures.
Game of the day: Manchester United 3-2 Newcastle United
With speculation mounting over Jose Mourinho’s seemingly untenable position at Old Trafford, the visit of Newcastle and a former foe of the Portuguese in Rafa Benitez was one of considerable intrigue. How would the United fans and players react to the reports that their manager could face the sack after the match?
As far as the latter were concerned, they couldn’t have made a worse start, and it was only the influence of an impressively home crowd that ensured quite a remarkable outcome. With the visitors two to the good inside ten minutes, United looked utterly shell shocked and all at sea defensively.
With two changes made before the second half kicked-off, with both Eric Bailly and Scott McTominay sacrificed, it took a trio of stars that had beforehand lost the faith of their manager this season to turn things around. Forgotten man Juan Mata curled in a delicate free-kick with 20 minutes remaining, before Anthony Martial combined superbly with the excellent Paul Pogba to equalise. Alexis Sanchez bagged the winner from the bench in the 90th minute to create an atmosphere at Old Trafford that might yet help United, and Mourinho, come back from the brink.
Honourable mention: Borussia Dortmund 4-3 Augsburg
Player of the day: Joshua King (Bournemouth) - 9.42 rating
With a brace at Watford doubling his tally for the Premier League season, King was instrumental in an impressive 4-0 victory away from home for Bournemouth. The Norway international hit the target with three of four attempts at goal and played the telling pass that ultimately led to David Brooks’ second goal in as many matches.
Honourable mention: Paco Alcacer (Borussia Dortmund) - 8.83 rating
Shock of the day: Bayern Munich 0-3 Borussia M.Gladbach
It’s a tough one to call in terms of the upset of the day across Europe’s top five leagues on Saturday, but Bundesliga supremo Bayern’s humbling 3-0 reverse to Gladbach just steals it having taken place at the Allianz Arena. That’s now back-to-back league defeats for the first time since May 2015 and the pressure is really mounting on new manager Niko Kovac - a somewhat controversial appointment in the first place.
Four matches without a win in all competitions, with just two goals scored in that time, the Bavarians have dropped to fifth in Germany’s top-flight and were two down within 16 minutes at the weekend, the hosts looked short of ideas and conceded a late third to condemn them to a heaviest league defeat without scoring themselves since a loss by the same scoreline to Dortmund over four years ago.
Honourable mention: Deportivo Alaves 1-0 Real Madrid
