And with that I’m going to wave farewell. Here’s the match report again. Bye!

Arne Slot says United showed in the last 15 minutes that “they are even better than they maybe know themselves”.

Because they got a big chance right before the end we also feel a bit relieved. But over the course of the game we created much more chances than them. But being 1-0 down and 2-1 up and conceding such a big chance at the end, maybe a point is something to take. I think if you look at the game tomorrow you’ll see in the first 20, 25 minutes we have three very good chances. But we played against very good individuals, I’ve said it many times now and you could see it today. It’s also a chance for them against us to show themselves, more than other games, that they can compete against the best in the league.

Alexis Mac Allister has a quick chat:

The result is not good enough. The performance wasn’t as good as we wanted. But in the end it was a fair result. We didn’t play as we wanted, we conceded too many chances. The effort was there, the mentality was there because we came back, but when you’re winning 2-1 after 75 minutes you have to defend better.

Andy Hunter has filed his match report from Anfield, and here it is:

An evening of some redemption for Manchester United was not without its customary agony at Anfield. Seconds remained of a gripping battle between the two old rivals when Joshua Zirkzee, taunted mercilessly by the Old Trafford faithful on Monday, found himself staring down at Alisson’s goal.

He spurned the shot at glory in favour of teeing up Harry Maguire, another maligned figure during United’s long fall from grace. He found Row Z of the Anfield Road Stand, and United’s wait for a first win at Liverpool in nine years goes on. Ruben Amorim sank to his haunches as the late miss unfolded and soon exited down the Anfield tunnel, although there was much to encourage the troubled United head coach here.

Much more here:

Bruno Fernandes is man of the match, and has a chat about it:

I’m pretty upset because if we showed this today against Liverpool, why can’t we do this every week? We said before the game, we need much more from ourselves to get something from this season. We need to look forward. We need more. I wasn’t worried about people putting in effort today because it’s Liverpool, everyone’s going to try to do their best. I’m more worried about Southampton [after the Arsenal cup tie].

Today was about putting real effort into the game. Playing with some passion. You have the tactics, but at the end of the day you need to put effort in and that’s why we got something from the game today. It can’t stop here. We have to bring this frustration to the next games. To understand that this has to be our level, and if we can do it at Anfield we need to do it every week.

Meanwhile, here’s a tasty stat:

Manchester United’s point takes them above West Ham into 13th:

That was quite silly and very fun. Both teams will feel they should have won it, which is probably as you’d want it, but it was United who missed a sitter in the final 20 seconds.

90+7 mins: What a miss! Harry Maguire of all people has fluffed a chance to win it!

90+6 mins: Robertson takes hold of Amad’s shirt and doesn’t let go for ages, eventually conceding a dangerous free-kick on the right.

90+5 mins: Liverpool’s most controlled spell for a while ends with Gravenberch miscontrolling Robertson’s pass, and a throw-in.

90+4 mins: Another corner for Liverpool, after Salah’s shot deflects off a defender.

90+1 mins: There’ll be seven minutes of stoppage time! Liverpool’s corner is headed on by Mac Allister and towards goal by Van Dijk, but again straight to Onana.

90 mins: Save! Liverpool break from the corner, Salah crosses and it breaks to Jota, who shoots straight at Onana from 15 yards! Then another save! Bradley beats Fernandes and tries to beat Onana at his near post, but the keeper gets a hand to it!

89 mins: United win a corner. They take it short, it’s played back to Fernandes, and his low shot from wide of the penalty area is straight at Alisson, who spills it over the line for another corner.

86 mins: More substitutions. Liverpool bring on Harvey Elliott and Conor Bradley and take off Gakpo (who’s played pretty well) and Alexander-Arnold (who has not). United bring Joshua Kirkzee on for Hojland.

85 mins: United keep the ball for a bit, which seems precisely the right thing to do. Chaos is more likely to benefit Liverpool, you’d have thought.

83 mins: Alexander-Arnold is booked for tripping Fernandes. United bring Leny Yoro on for De Ligt.

82 mins: Alexander-Arnold gives the ball away again, with a truly dreadful pass. Amad leads the break and passes to Garnacho, who is well shepherded by Van Dijk and wins only a corner.

79 mins: Mazraoui does well to burst into space in midfield, but then overhits his pass to Garnacho and Alisson collects. Meanwhile the finger of blame for the two goals United have conceded is pointing at Matthijs de Ligt. “At fault for both goals, clear cases of dereligt in his defensive duties, surely?” writes Tim Pearson.

77 mins: Nunez checks De Ligt’s positioning and jumps into him. De Ligt goes down, the referee goes to his pocket.

75 mins: Salah wins the battle for the free kick with Alexander-Arnold, and sends it over the bar. “I genuinely can’t get over how poor Trent has been. So so so poor,” writes Anthony O Connell (and, in various ways, several others. “Real Madrid must be looking at this wondering what they’re getting.”

73 mins: Maguire puts in another meaty but fair tackle to dispossess Salah just outside the penalty area, but the referee doesn’t like it so Liverpool end up with a tasty free kick, and Maguire with a booking.

71 mins: And now Liverpool have transitioned from erring to purring. Alexander-Arnold wins a corner. United bring Garnacho on for Mainoo.

68 mins: The referee has been told to look at a replay of the incident. The ball was headed straight into De Ligt, who had no time to react. But his left arm was in an unnatural position.

67 mins: Huge claims for handball as Mac Allister’s header hits De Ligt’s raised arm. The referee waves play on for now …

65 mins: A delicious sense of complete chaos has settled over the game since the equaliser.

64 mins: De Ligt pulls Darwin back as Liverpool break, and accepts his booking with a look of resignation.

61 mins: A couple of changes for Liverpool, who bring on Darwin Nunez and Diogo Jota and take off Luis Diaz and Curtis Jones.

60 mins: VAR checks for offside, but the pass is beautifully timed and the goal stands!

55 mins: Liverpool are a bit of a mess at the moment. United have looked, more than anything, really well coached.

53 mins: It all comes from a rubbish Alexander-Arnold clearance, but Ferndandes’s pass is superb. Even Martinez is taken by surprise by it, but he has enough space to recover in style.

50 mins: Liverpool leave all sorts of space on their left and United attack it, but when they get into the area Amad falls over.

49 mins: Onana eventually thumps the ball all the way up to Dalot, who gets into the penalty area but sees his shot blocked by a sliding Van Dijk.

49 mins: The ball is curled into a hum of players. Onana flaps at it, but it doesn’t lead to a chance.

48 mins: Liverpool win the first corner of the second half, in front of a vocal Kop. Mainoo appears to be marking Van Dijk, for some reason.

46 mins: Peeeeep! The second half is under way.

“This has been unfolding like a Greek tragedy. As in, I haven’t enjoyed it. At all,” writes Matt Dony. “Typical that United pick this week to remember how to play a little bit of football.” The players are back on the pitch; Liverpool have had plenty of second-half improvements this season. Time for another?

Gakpo missed Liverpool’s best chance of the half (here). It’s interesting to compare his finish with Haaland’s second for Manchester City yesterday, from an extremely similar chance. From the left of goal Gakpo went with his right foot and missed the far post, Haaland dinked it with his left and that is very much the way.

“This is as good as United get these days: Dragging Liverpool down to their level,” writes Justin Kavanagh. That’s a bit harsh: they’ve been well organised defensively (excepting only that moment when Mac Allister sprinted onto Salah’s pass without anyone noticing), have worked hard in midfield and created a couple of chances.

Rosemary Maltus-Smith wants to know the temperature in Liverpool this afternoon. About one degree celcius, or 34 fahrenheit, I’m told, with winds of around 8mph and constant rain by way of bonus.

45+1 mins: The first of two(ish) minutes of first-half stoppage time and Luis Diaz and Gravenberch both have moments with the ball at their feet inside the penalty area, but they always have defenders in front of them and neither shoots.

43 mins: Then Liverpool break, but at the end of it Salah’s attempt to lift a curling shot into the far corner ends up in the crowd.

42 mins: Another chance for United! Martinez lifts a simple ball over the Liverpool defence to Hojland, who draws the keeper but then shoots into him. It drops to Fernandes, whose volley hits Konate.

41 mins: Amad finds Bruno Fernandes running down the left beyond Alexander-Arnold, but his low cross is cut out. Everything United are doing is coming down that side.

38 mins: Liverpool have had a couple of encouraging incursions into United’s penalty area in the last couple of minutes, but on both occasions they couldn’t control the ball once they’d got there.

35 mins: An absolutely gorgeous control and turn from Gravenberch, 25 yards from goal, from Alexander-Arnold’s pass. It doesn’t lead to anything, but if the highlights of this game turn out to be any better than hundreds of replays of that single moment they will be very good indeed.

34 mins: De Ligt goes flying in on Gravenberch, and then about 30 seconds later Maguire on Luis Diaz. Proper centre-half challenges, those, meaty but accurate.

32 mins: Alexander-Arnold plays the ball into touch off Maguire, but United get the goal kick. A brace of very Guardian emails for you now. I’m not really sure if they’re any good because I have lacked the time and brainpower to properly cogitate upon them. “What is unfolding now is reminiscent of a Greek tragedy with king Oedipus Ratcliffe getting rid of his father Glazer and marrying into the club of his Mother Earth,” writes Nigel Moore. “Only time will tell if he will have to perform some metaphorical act of eye gouging and be forced into an unforgivingly Monegasque exile!” Meanwhile, from Stephen Moonie: “Eric Peterson’s email reminded me of Freud’s interpretation of Michelangelo’s statue of Moses, where the prophet almost loses his grip on the tablets because of the impertinence of the unbelievers. In this case, substitute Ange Postecoglou, Amorim, or Russell Martin for Moses (interestingly, they’re all bearded).”

29 mins: And then gaps as Gravenberch’s 25-yarder zings just wide.

28 mins: Cheers as Mainoo falls into a pitchside snowbank.

27 mins: A Liverpool attack breaks down with a misplaced pass to Gravenberch, who stretches and plays it straight out of play. It’s extremely wet in Liverpool this afternoon, and clearly conditions are obviously difficult.

23 mins: Salah tries to turn Dalot, who hangs on to him and by doing so ensures he’ll have to spend the remaining 67 minutes defending Salah while on a yellow card.

22 mins: Now United win a free kick inside Liverpool’s half. Fernandes crosses and Maguire heads straight into De Ligt, who is offside.

20 mins: And now a brilliant chance for United! Dalot is released down the left, beating Liverpool’s offside trap, and he crosses to Amad, who somehow runs beyond the ball and then heads it away from goal!

18 mins: A lovely burst from Mac Allister, the outstanding player of the first 20% of the match. He finds Salah, but the Egyptian’s attempt to lay the ball off to Luis Diaz hits a defender.

16 mins: And now our first save, to stop what would have been a phenomenal goal for Liverpool! Salah’s ball in from the right finds Mac Allister’s run into the box, and his low volley hits Onana’s legs and deflects wide.

14 mins: Close! Luis Diaz plays a nice little pass to Gravenberch, who plays in Gakpo. His shot from the left of goal rolls a foot wide of the far post.

12 mins: There have been some shots now! Liverpool break, and Salah’s weak cross is cleared equally weekly to Trent Alexander-Arnold, whose drive from the edge of the area hits a defender and rebounds to Luis Diaz, whose shot flies way over.

9 mins: The game hasn’t really coalesced into any kind of shape yet, but United will be encouraged not only that they’re not yet a couple of goals down, but that they haven’t allowed a shot on goal of any sort.

6 mins: Salah has a first touch, drives into the area and sends the ball in low, but Maguire cuts it out.

5 mins: Liverpool have the ball on the edge of United’s penalty area for a while, but they can’t find a way in and are eventually forced to go back to Alisson.

3 mins: Mainoo is up and recovered. When he’s allowed back on the field he immediately hares over to Trent Alexander-Arnold, who is looking the other way and not expecting him, and nicks the ball off him. “I’m glad I’m not Eric Peterson but these inflexible tactical chaps have been providing wonderful entertainment,” writes Tim Stappard. I’d agree that a certain amount of haplessness only adds to the gaiety of nations.

1 min: Mainoo stretches for a challenge in midfield and stays down. Looks like Gravenberch clipped his head with a trailing foot, entirely accidentally. The physio is on.

1 min: Peeeeeeep! Liverpool get the ball rolling.

You’ll Never Walk Alone rings out. The players huddle. Football incoming!

The players are on their way out. If you’re at the stadium and think the managers seem to have rudely ignored each other, don’t fret: they pre-hugged in the warmth of the tunnel.

Eric Peterson emails, and he appears to be narked. “I fervently hope this season marks the end of the ‘tactical idealist’ sashaying into a Premier League dressing room with some supposedly unassailable system of playing football to bestow upon his minions as if it’s etched in the stone tablets he just hauled down from the nearby mountain,” he writes. “Ruben Amorim, Ange Postecoglou, Russell Martin, the whole lot of them. I’m done with it, all of it. The failure to prepare an alternative when the opposition inevitably adjusts to your tactics, the failure to give attention to the other parts of the game required to succeed (like defending set pieces), the hubris behind announcing to the world that this is how you play and will always play come what may? Enough. Once and for all, enough.”

Meanwhile Roy Keane, who is sitting alongside Daniel Sturridge in the Sky studio today, is growling already:

I don’t feel it today. I’m even surprised at myself. I look at the energy off them. Today, I feel probably more worried than I ever have for this United. It’s one of the worst United teams I’ve seen for a long, long time.

And now Ruben Amorim’s spoken too. Incredible scenes.

Of course, when you play a game of football anything is possible. We have to perform better than last week, that is our goal, and we have to focus on the little things to help us to be in the game. Let’s improve the basic things. We need to be a team, and for that we need to recover really fast, to go forward really fast. The players were nervous, anxious [last week], but we need to be brave. Remember this is the fun part of our week.

Arne Slot has a pre-match chat with Sky:

I think this every game we play, it’s every time a serious test. Every team has good players, and United has much more than some teams we face. When you play in the Premier League it’s always going to be a hard and challenging game.

He’s asked if there’s any chance of complacency, given the pre-match chat about them racking up a cricket score:

It might lead to United players saying, ‘We’re much better than people are saying.’ Which they are. This season against City, last season in the FA Cup final, when you least expect it, they show up.

Some reactions to the teams: “It has been grim being a Utd fan. No need to get into details. Yet this starting XI gives hope,” writes Niall O’Keeffe. Meanwhile: “Larry David might suggest that United going out and getting enough of their own men sent off to take the de facto 3-0 defeat might be a ‘pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good’ idea, at this juncture,” says Steven Hughes.

Additional pre-match reading: Here’s Barney Ronay on the difference between the two managers:

Liverpool and Arne Slot are a perfect point of contrast. The systems-obsessive versus the pragmatist: it a key dichotomy in modern coaching. On the one hand the unflinching philosophy-merchant, the just-the-way-we-play evangelist.

This has become the norm and a necessary form of managerial self-promotion. Vincent Kompany took Burnley down playing a delightfully brittle style and was rewarded with one of the top jobs in world football. Ange Postecoglou continues to mask the failings of his team behind a kind of hammy ideological defiance, as though there is simply too much at stake here, bro, too much art, too much love, to waste any time learning to defend or adapt or find any other gears.

Amorim is a version of this. Here is a manager who came to United advertising weeks in advance the exact tactical shape his teams would play, as though in three at the back plus energetic midfield pressing he has uncovered some kind of incontrovertible truth.

Much more here:

Further pre-match reading: Here’s Dominic Booth on the miserable life of the Manchester United fan.

“It’s so depressing and there’s so many different things going on at the same time,” says United supporter Si Lloyd. “The finances, the stuff with Ineos, Dan Ashworth’s exit, the Rashford thing … I can understand why a lot of people are upset – I am too. The backdrop of this negative stream of stories off the field paints the picture of a club that’s in a state of complete desperation. It must be an absolute dream for people who hate United and watched us win everything in the 90s and noughties.”

Much more here:

Pre-match reading: Here’s Jonathan Wilson on Manchester United’s travails:

The thought had always been that it couldn’t happen now. It’s just not possible in modern football that a super-club could be relegated. Manchester United may have gone down in 1974 but it’s not going to happen in 2025. Even when Ruben Amorim said that United were in a relegation battle after Monday’s 2-0 defeat by Newcastle, he was making the point to shock.

And it’s not going to happen now. United will not be relegated. They probably only need 15 points from the second half of the season to be safe and the financial structure of modern football means there are at least three sides worse than them. Yet it’s significant that Amorim could mention relegation without it sounding entirely absurd, revealing that it feels worth doing the calculation, working out what sort of tally might be necessary for United to survive. What has happened at United since Sir Alex Ferguson left feels like thought experiment made flesh: what would it take for the most successful side in English history to go down?

Much more here:

This game got the go-ahead shortly after midday today after two meetings of Liverpool council’s safety advisory group, and despite a heavy overnight snowdump. “Seems a bit weird that this game has been given the go-ahead, but I guess it suits Liverpool down to the ground as United are in total disarray and this is as close to a home banker as you will ever see in the Premier League,” writes Rick Harris.

It certainly suits Liverpool, both because of the two teams’ recent performances and the impact a second rescheduled game would have on their schedule later this season, though given there is a team in this season’s league that has lost eight of their 10 away games and won none of them, and this fixture’s propensity for surprises, I don’t think the result is a formality (the bookies have an away win at somewhere around 6/1, which (totally useless fact alert) is the same as Paul Mescal being named the next James Bond.