Manchester United’s Premier League season got off on a dreadful start as Wilfried Zaha scored twice against his former club to hand Crystal Palace a 3-1 win at Old Trafford.
The Eagles have now won their first two games of a Premier League season for the first time and on their last two visits to United.
After Andros Townsend opened the scoring early on, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s men felt aggrieved with the nature of Palace’s second from the penalty spot as Victor Lindelof was harshly punished for handball and David De Gea’s save from Jordan Ayew’s spot-kick was ruled out by VAR before Zaha converted the retaken penalty.
But they could have no complaints about the result as they looked way off the pace in their first match of the new campaign, little over a month since they ended the last one with defeat to Sevilla in the Europa League semi-finals.
United finished last season on a 14-match unbeaten run in the Premier League to secure a third-place finish and raise hopes of mounting a title challenge to rivals Liverpool and Manchester City this season.
But on this evidence, they need far more than the solitary signing of Donny Van de Beek, who scored on his debut, to compete at the top of the table.
Solskjaer kept faith with De Gea in goal ahead of Dean Henderson, who has returned to Old Trafford from an impressive loan spell at Sheffield United.
The Spanish international was beaten after just seven minutes but was blameless as the United defence was carved open by Jeffrey Schlupp’s run and cross from the left and Townsend ghosted in ahead of Luke Shaw to convert at the far post.
