The race for the top four is extremely tight with Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea all within three points of each other as they compete for Champions League qualification.
If United are to make it into the top four they’re going to have to be on their best form. For Alexis Sánchez and Romelu Lukaku on the game against Crystal Palace, the task was simple: step up.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was without eight first-team players and sweating on Marcus Rashford’s fitness in the lead up to United’s trip to Crystal Palace and called on two of his most expensive charges to plug the gaps in his depleted squad.
It was indicative of the duo’s standing at Old Trafford that United’s caretaker manager even had to reference two of his most renowned assets in his call to arms.
Lukaku, United’s £75 million striker, was without a goal in his previous nine while Sánchez, the club’s highest earner, had contrived to register five goals and nine assists in his 39 United appearances to date.
Selhurst Park, Solskjaer said, afforded Lukaku and Sánchez ‘a chance to play to their potential’. “Hopefully Alexis and Romelu can step up,” he added. “We will have a good team out on the pitch.”
The Belgium international’s two-goal haul secured United’s eighth-consecutive victory on the road, a club record, and signalled a key difference that could prove decisive in Lukaku and Sánchez’s respective futures at Old Trafford.
Their statistics at Palace were almost identical. Sánchez recorded a marginally superior pass completion rate and lost the ball on two fewer occasions. But the chances that fell his way were squandered. Lukaku, with his brace, made up for an early misfire in devastating fashion.
Lukaku, now tied 20th in the list of Premier League top scorers, could use the display at Palace as a springboard to reboot his United career but it has reached the point at Old Trafford where you wonder whether Sánchez, at 30 years of age, can hold a genuine hope of reversing his fortunes at the club.
The Chile international played his 668th senior, competitive game on Wednesday night and whether he is resigned to the sort of fate that saw Wayne Rooney’s excessive mileage catch up with him at a similar age has become a growing concern.
Lukaku, at 25, is well capable of putting a blip behind him – even with his excess muscle that Solskjaer has told him to lose but Sánchez’s case is more complex.
The former Arsenal forward so rarely produces all round showings that the complaints filed in his direction concern, with alarming regularity, a one of either the squandering of possession, being wasteful in front of goal or failing to beat defenders.
Solskjaer has been a beacon of positivity during his 15-game tenure to date at Old Trafford but he was forlorn when asked about Sánchez’s hapless display against Paris Saint Germain in the Champions League last16 leg on February 13.
“I can’t do anything about Alexis Sánchez,” he said. “When he plays he needs to finds himself because we know there’s a quality player there.” Perhaps there is little left to find.