Manchester United held scoreless by their former youth goalkeeper despite taking 37 shots

There will be a lot of focus on the negatives for Manchester United after their 0-0 draw with Burnley, and that comes with their recent form. It was their fourth game without a win in the Premier League, so Jose Mourinho isn’t getting the benefit of the doubt anymore. It doesn’t help that he was sent off at halftime for complaining about referee Mark Clattenberg missing a penalty call.

But they should have scored at least six goals against Burnley, and played well enough to do so. The Red Devils just happened to run into Tom Heaton.

Heaton was a United youth product who never made a first team appearance for the club. He went out on six different loan spells before finally leaving for Cardiff, then eventually establishing himself at Burnley. It’s his performances for his current club that have gotten him into the England setup, and he saved his best yet for a match against his former club.

As good as Heaton was, United completely missed a ton of great chances too. They had an astonishing 37 shots, but forced Heaton to make just 11 saves from them.

While this was by far their unluckiest game yet, matches like this one have become the norm for United this season. They’ve created more quality chances than their opponents in most of their matches, but the likes of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Wayne Rooney and Paul Pogba have struggled in front of goal. They’ll probably start finding the back of the net soon, but United already has a sizable hole to dig themselves out of. They should have broken out of their slump today, but ran into a very good goalkeeper on his best day.