Manchester United: Goodbye to the Premier League title bid that probably never was - The Warm-Up

That Manchester United title bid, then. We may have to change its status from 'they couldn't… could they?' to 'they couldn't, could they'. Amazing the difference a spot of punctuation makes. Amazing the difference a 1-1 draw away at Crystal Palace makes.

Fine margins, of course. Had United been awarded that penalty in the second half, then right now you'd likely be reading about the incredible continuation of Marcus Rashford's scoring run. Had Moise Olise been just a little less precise, you'd be reading about United's lucky escape. And either way, the overwhelming sense would probably be something like 'winning ugly? hey, that's what title winners do…'

We go where the result tells us to go. But generally speaking, if there's been one consistent feature of title winners over the last few seasons, it hasn't been that semi-mythical ability to win when playing well. Rather, it's been the ability to render that knack irrelevant. To turn up to - say - Palace away on a Wednesday night and just rattle in two or three early goals. Get the tie killed. Don't risk ending up somewhere dramatic.

United, though better than they have been for a good long while, aren't there yet. They were frustrated for the opening 20 odd minutes, then slowly cracked Palace apart over the rest of the first half, eventually getting their goal. And then, for the second half, they simply didn't come to play. The flurry that followed the equaliser: 15 minutes of that after half-time and they probably get a second, and we can keep that notional title bid punctuated.

Perhaps they were knackered. Perhaps this isn't going to be the only time we see a team inexplicably fail to rouse themselves to anything beyond holding on. But the best way to manage games is to get them won. Palace defended well and kept themselves alive, and United didn't have enough… well, pick your favourite characteristic of a properly good team and go with it. Intensity! Depth! Wit! Winningness! Still, at least Wout Weghorst looked useful, in a running around and occupying defenders sort of a way.

Erik ten Hag's job this season was to get United three kinds of back. Back into some kind of coherent on-field shape, back into some kind of focused off-field harmony, and back into the Champions League. He's already managed the first and the second, so well done him. If, come the end of the season, they finish in the top four and thoughts turn to what else might have been, then there's a compliment for him and his squad in that. And in last night's game, a handy little primer on all the things they need to get better at.

As for Palace, have you seen what they've got coming up? Newcastle come to Selhurst Park at the weekend, then it's Manchester United at Old Trafford, Brighton at home, Brentford away, Liverpool at home, Villa away, and then Manchester City (h) and Arsenal (a) back to back.

In league positions, that's fourth, third, seventh, eighth, ninth, 11th, second and first. In noises, that's erk, oof, woah, ugh, erp, hmmm, oh no, oh dear. Get all your Palace players out of your fantasy teams immediately. At the time of writing, they don't play a team below them in the table until April Fool's Day.

So last night's point was a precious one. So too the performance: Palace stifled United for long spells of the game, and they're going to have to do a lot of that over the next couple of months. There are currently eight points between Palace in 12th and West Ham in 18th. Let's meet back here at the end of March and see what's happened to that gap, shall we?

Points are points, but the really important news for Manchester United came earlier in the day. Jadon Sancho has returned from his program of individual training and is back training with the first team, though not yet back in the match day squad.

To the Warm-Up's eyes, it was the inconsistent performance by Antony on the right wing - flickering, bickering, off after an hour - that offered the most encouragement for Sancho in his long road back to the starting XI. Which isn't to write Antony off, just to suggest that ideally you'd want an alternative there as well, in the interests of rest and rotation and those days when nothing seems to be working.

But we're betting that Sancho's eyes were drawn a little further back down the pitch, to the born-again Aaron Wan-Bissaka. United weren't great but their ex-Palace full-back looks entirely reborn: confident once again in defence, in the timing of his interventions, and newly confident in his ability to wander up the pitch and get involved as United build attacks. His renaissance might be an even better advert for Ten Hag's coaching skills than Rashford's goals.

The ideal situation for any manager is to have two players for each position, both capable of doing the job well but also capable of doing the job differently. This allows for both rotation and variation, according to the opponent and the state of the match. It looks very much like Ten Hag will have that at right-back, once Diogo Dalot comes back to fitness. And if Ten Hag and Sancho have together found a way out of the weeds, then they'll have it on the right wing too.

Here is Wilfried Gnonto's first goal against Cardiff City. He did this in the first minute. We missed it, obviously, because we were on the wrong channel. Sorry, Wilfried. Emmerdale was good, though.

Incredible, obviously. Di Canio-esque, definitely. Our question, then, is if you tried to do that - the jump, the scissoring legs, the looping finish - what would it look like? Which bit would you fall down on?

Assuming, incorrectly, that The Warm-Up managed to get into the right position, we reckon we'd fail at the first possible moment. We'd mistime the jump and either the ball would be long gone, or it would plant hard into the side of our head. This is because The Warm-Up is not a footballer. We mostly do punctuation jokes.

But we ask because it's rare to see a goal with such a perfect difficulty curve. Getting into position: good. Timing the jump: better. Getting a decent contact: better still. And getting the perfect contact, such that the ball loops up and over but then comes back down again? Best of all. And so you can take footballers, all of them, and plot them somewhere along that curve. Maybe all of them would get into position, and most of them would time the jump right. Maybe the decent attackers would get some kind of useful contact, and the very decent get some kind of useful goalbound contact. But to get it up and over and back down again; to get that pinch of delicacy into it? Very, very few, we're saying. Gnonto really is special.

Here's the official Leeds United edit of Mateusz Klich's emotional send-off at Elland Road last night. Doesn't that coat look warm? Doesn't that reception sound warm?

And here's the bit they mysteriously forgot to include. Nice of him to include the away fans.

We're going to be cheeky today and step outside football. This may not even technically be sport, although there is a dartboard in the background so it probably counts for tax purposes. But it's one of the most beautiful things ever to happen on British television, so we beg your forgiveness. You'll understand once you've seen it. Here is the man who can jump on eggs without breaking them.

"Oh yes, it's definitely been jumped on, that egg."

To take a slightly more serious turn, here's Juventus midfielder Sara Bjork Gunnarsdottir writing in The Players' Tribune, on the tribulations of being "the first person in the history of Lyon to get pregnant [...] with the full intention to come back and play."

Essentially, Lyon stopped paying her. She chased, her agent chased, "The players’ union in France became involved, and then FIFPRO. Weeks turned to months. Still no full paycheck." And then in the end she does receive something, from one of the club directors. A threat. "If Sara goes to FIFA with this, she has no future in Lyon at all."

Then, when she does return with her child to Lyon, she finds herself sidelined and isolated. "The president also walked into the room while I was there. It was the first time he had seen me since I had returned with my baby. He didn’t even greet me, didn’t look at or acknowledge Ragnar. But Vincent had just reassured me, five minutes before, regarding the case, that 'it wasn’t personal.' After that moment, with the president, it was clear that it was."

A happy ending, though. Gunnarsdottir is now at Juventus, and in May a tribunal ordered Lyon to pay her unpaid salary in full. And the tribunal didn't just order Lyon to pay up, but castigated them for failing in their duty of care: "there was no contact with me during my pregnancy. No one was really checking on me, following up, seeing how I was doing mentally and physically, both as an employee, but also as a human being. Basically, they had a responsibility to look after me, and they didn’t. After Lyon received the grounds, they decided not to appeal."

Thursday nights! Are Premier League nights! Which is why it's Manchester City against Tottenham this evening. Going to be weird, all those Arsenal fans supporting Tottenham.