Manchester United youngster Tahith Chong had a bad night in tonight’s Europa League defeat away to Astana.
The Dutch starlet’s horror miss from close range came just moments before Astana equalised, and they later went on to win the game 2-1 when Chong could quite easily have put them 2-0 down and surely out of the game.
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It was not a fine moment from Chong, though these things happen occasionally to even the best players.
Discussing the miss after the game, however, pundit Robbie Savage seemed to blame laziness on the 19-year-old failing to find the back of the net.
“Gomes and Shaw do every so well. Shaw with the one-two, good cut back and then Chong, open net, I don’t know how he’s missed that!” Savage said in commentary for BT Sport, as quoted by the Metro.
“It was a great opportunity for him to get on the scoresheet for Manchester United. Lazy!
“Football is all about those fine margins. Chong should have put United 2-0 up and 38 seconds later [Dmitri] Shomko hits a strike into that far corner past [Lee] Grant.”
This sounds like a pretty bizarre explanation from Savage, as it’s hard to imagine Chong or indeed any other player in that situation would be too lazy to tap the ball into the goal.
It may be that Savage is just using slightly colourful language to describe Chong’s technique, but it certainly sounds like he’s taking a rather strange and unfair swipe at the Red Devils ace over his attitude.