Dorgu Heads 96th-Minute Equaliser as Man Utd Fight Back Twice in 4-4 Classic With Villa

There are games that settle arguments, and games that leave everyone in the stadium arguing about what they have just seen. Old Trafford got the second kind on Sunday, and by the time Patrick Dorgu rose to meet a corner in the sixth minute of stoppage time, the noise sounded less like a football crowd and more like a dam breaking.

United had been dead twice in this match, and the first time came after four minutes. Alysson's tame-looking strike slipped between Senne Lammens' legs with barely sixty seconds on the clock, and another was parried straight to Nicolas Jackson, who swept in his sixth goal in his last six league games. Two-nil down inside four minutes — the first time in Premier League history United had done that to themselves — and the anger in the stands turned on the players: "You're not fit to wear the shirt."

It was also, strangely, the making of the afternoon. Tuesday's Champions League comeback from two down against Roma had shown the same nerve, and the same man started the rescue here: Matheus Cunha won a penalty, Kamara diving in rashly to clip him, and Fernandes sat Suzuki down from the spot. Then, just before the break, Youri Tielemans drilled low beyond the Villa goalkeeper with the help of a deflection — his first goal since swapping Villa for United — and a game that had looked like a rout was level at 2-2.

What should have been a launching pad fell flat within eight minutes of the restart. Dalot dived in foolishly to trip Alysson, and McGinn converted from the spot. Moments later Yoro headed a McGinn free-kick off his own crossbar, and Goretzka forced the ball over the line in the scramble that followed. Four-two Villa, and the pre-match protests against the Glazer family — a banner reading "We don't want a new stadium, we want new owners" — gave way to the flat silence of a crowd that had seen this film before.

But this United side, for all its faults, does not know when it is beaten. Joshua Zirkzee steered home in the second minute of stoppage time and the stadium was alive again. Then, with the clock at 96 minutes, Fernandes swung in a corner, Suzuki flapped at it and missed, and Dorgu — on as a substitute, like Zirkzee — nodded home. Four-four. Old Trafford erupted as if a winner had gone in, and in a sense it had: a point salvaged from a game United had lost twice.

The joy, though, has its limits. United are still without a win in eight Premier League games, their joint-longest run, and they will spend the international break in the relegation zone on eight points from ten — their lowest position ten games into a season since 1986-87, when they were 20th. Villa scored four against United for the first time since November 1963, and Unai Emery, in his 200th Premier League game, will wonder how his side left with one point after leading 2-0 and 4-2.

For Michael Carrick, the draw is a stay of execution rather than a pardon after the 3-0 home defeat by Bournemouth a fortnight ago, and he now faces an anxious wait over whether the board installs a replacement before the trip to Liverpool on November 22, with Howe and Nagelsmann among the leading contenders. A comeback buys a manager time. What it cannot do is hide the table — and the question over the international break is whether character alone is enough to get United out of the bottom three.