Manchester United's stats may suggest they're improving, but a terrible 3-1 loss to Brentford shows otherwise

LONDON -- Amid the catastrophe at Grimsby, the deluge of Erling Haaland runs up the gut and the furore over the transfer business, there was a counterpoint that kept humming in the background. The memes and the moans might say one thing but the data really did insist that Manchester United were improving with Ruben Amorim at the helm.

It wasn't some trick of the eye or a weird sample size skewing things in Amorim's favor. Since the start of April, United had the fifth best expected goal difference in the Premier League. Take penalties out of the equation as Bruno Fernandes so tamely did this afternoon and you still have a team whose metrics are better than what was inherited from Erik ten Hag. Seventh best in the league to be precise and that's not bad at all, particularly for a 15 game sample size. After some bottoming out through the winter something seemed to click going into the spring, enough that Amorim felt able to predict that the good times were around the corner.

His team would go on to deliver the highest xG of any team in the division through the first five matches, not something to be sniffed at given that their early season fixture list includes Chelsea, Manchester City and Arsenal. Those opponents probably went some way to explaining why the defense had given up what it had, eight goals conceded through five, 7.29 xG against. In totality the numbers would say that United are improving and really isn't that a fair return from Amorim's first 11 months?

Park the numbers for a moment though. Does it feel like United are improving? Was what they served up in this pitiful 3-1 loss at Brentford different to the depths plumbed under Ten Hag, Ralf Rangnick or David Moyes in any meaningful way other than where the players were standing without possession? This had the feel of one of those sky is falling in games, the sort that of late happens every fortnight or so at United.

The post-match press conference even came with a throw back to that David Moyes line. What needs to change for United to get the consistency that has evaded a coach yet to win back-to-back Premier League games (you wouldn't want your follicular future to be dependent on this team winning five straight), Amorim was asked. "Work on everything," he said.

"The frustration is that every [Brentford] goal, we worked on that during the week. We can do better with the ball. We can have more control. We can understand that sometimes when the decisions are not in your favor, the momentum is not in your favor, we can control the ball.

"We can settle down the game. That is something that I know this team can do. But when everything, the moments, the penalty, the foul before the first goal, all these things are against us, we need to have more personality to control the games, calm down the games and then to play better."

Ruben Amorim says Manchester United need to improve their defending, attacking and composure. Do you ever feel like the last 12 years have been an extended groundhog day? A decade plus of basics that have not been addressed, of sticking plaster recruitment and players that apparently execute on the training ground, but fail to replicate it when it matters.

The end result of a week drilling the danger that Brentford would pose from long balls and set pieces? Chaos at set pieces and three goals all of which came from Brentford hitting long passes under little pressure into the sort of space in behind that Harry Maguire, Luke Shaw and Matthijs De Ligt cannot defend. It would be easy to blame United's opener on Maguire muddling up the offside trap but as ever with this club, the problems run deeper than just what one player does. The ball broke to Jordan Henderson outside the Brentford area and there was not even the hint of a counter press before the 35-year-old had taken a look and pinged one 70 yards into Igor Thiago's run.

Keith Andrews was hardly spilling state secrets after the game when he revealed that Brentford knew the space would open up for them if they deployed a midfield three to outnumber Fernandes and Manuel Ugarte. Of course, he noted, United's wide forwards could tuck inside to give Amorim a four to counterbalance in the middle of the park. It's hardly surprising that Brentford didn't expect Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo to do that.

In attack, meanwhile, you wouldn't know this is a team that had added 20% or so to its non-penalty xG per game since spending so heavily on Benjamin Sesko, Mbeumo and Cunha. Even if United had equalized through Fernandes' penalty they would have been papering over the cracks of today's performance. Amorim believed that Nathan Collins should also have received a red for pulling Mbeumo back -- "The referee told me that Bryan was not in control of the ball, I think he was not in control of the ball because he was pulled" -- but acknowledged this was a fair reflection of what comes with playing "Brentford's game." That missed penalty was one of just four chances United managed in the second half of a game they were supposed to be chasing.

Sesko had broken his scoring duck in his seventh game, but the three hacks he took at a loose ball before turning in were his sole meaningful contributions. Mbeumo cut in from his left to bend some crosses into the right sort of areas, but you couldn't blame him for missing the days when they were aimed at Yoanne Wissa or Ivan Toney. He'd surely have feasted with Igor Thiago too.

Cunha, meanwhile, seems to have brought all the wrong characteristics with him from Wolverhampton. There he could play hero ball because if he didn't score Wolves' goals no one else would; today he seemed utterly unaware that he was allowed to take shots from within the penalty area. United already had one supremely talented attacker who could do with moderating his shot selection, he was stuck back in midfield letting Mikkel Dammsgard run off him. In all half of the attacking sequences in which he was involved ended at Cunha's feet. That is not beyond the pale for an attacker but four of those ended in shots worth a combined 0.11 xG. No wonder Fernandes was so livid when his team mate failed to slip him in for a rare first half chance.

Sometimes data tells you the right story, one for instance of Cunha's insistence on hitting and hoping spoiling what rare darts United made into the Brentford third. Occasionally it is not quite so accurate and requires a little contextualizing. You might, for instance, look at unmoderated xG figures immediately after the final whistle here and say that with 2.11 to their name and 1.99 to Brentford's, United at least went down swinging. You would be wrong to do so. Sesko just took so many swings at a close range shot to give himself the best part of a full xG and United got a penalty out of nowhere.

The same might just be true of the aggregate. Whatever the data is suggesting it is going to have to argue very loudly and persuasively to convince that it reflects United better than what was served up today.