Ruben's Reds left it late at the Vitality Stadium as a 96th minute goal by the unlikeliest of sources Rasmus Hojlund gave Amorim a decent draw at a tough Bournemouth.

Despite having a week off before this match, United's focus will have undoutbedly been on Thursday night's semifinal in Bilbao. The last thing the United boss would've wanted to see though, was a team that were flat, toothless and uninspiring.

What we saw was a side that were flat, toothless and uninspiring. Even when the home side went down to 10 men, there was little from United to suggested that they would go on to win this match.

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The team the manager selected may have given us an indication that he did have an eye on Thursday but also suggested that Amorim wasn't going to let Bournemouth walk all over his team. Luke Shaw even started his first game since February last year.

That is unfortunately how the game panned out for the opening half hour as the former Bilbao man Andoni Iraola saw his players dominate United. They had the better openings and mid-way through the first period, got the first goal. Antoine Semenyo scoring against United again after netting in Bournemouth's 3-0 win at Old Trafford earlier this season.

However, there was some controvesay ahead of that goal as there was a VAR intervention for a potential red card. Tyler Adams' two-footed lunge on Garnacho didn't do too much damage but with the reckless nature of the tackle, it did look pretty out of control.

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That seemed like a red to me as while he got the ball, that challenge was certainly not the way you tackle. He got off with a yellow but it should've been more than that.

The home team then stepped things up after their goal with United a little on the ropes. The away side's best opportunity came when a ball from Bruno split the two Cherrie's centre-backs and found Garnacho. However, he couldn't get enough on it to get the ball over Kepa despite his best efforts.

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The second half saw Iraola's men come out the stronger. After the ref somehow gave a free-kick to them for Dorgu winning the ball and being kicked into himself - the Dane was then shown a yellow for that as well - Dango Ouattara tried to catch Onana out at the near post. Thankfully, the United shotstopper was spared his blushes as the ball came off the frame of the goal.

Then came another big call.

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Striker Evanilson tries to win the ball off Mazraoui with a slide tackle yet due to a slip, it made this challenge worse than it may have originally been.

VAR intervened again after referee Peter Bankes (who was having a poor game) gave the Bournemouth centre-forward a yellow. He was told to have a look at the monitor. We all know that this usually means the decision is going to be changed.

So it was and the Brazilian was sent off.

Bournemouth down to 10 with 20+ minutes to go. They were lucky not to have been down to 9 at that point.

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This meant relentless pressure from United on Kepa's goal yet the Spaniard was relatively untroubled. Amorim did make changes to freshen things up as well as rest those for Thursday as all of Casemiro, Maguire and Mainoo were substituted for Ugarte, Lindelof and Mount.

However, it ended up being youngster Chido Obi, who later came on for Mazraoui, who almost got the equalizer after a cross from the left. His shot was blocked but United were getting ever closer.

With 9 minutes of injury time added, this gave Ruben's Reds enough time to salvage something from the 10 men.

That they did as Hojlund's 2nd goal in 562 games (or so) resulted in MUFC walking away with a point from the Vitality Stadium. A draw was perhaps a fair result but we really made it hard for ourselves with some of the football.

Amorim maybe quite happy with the result and that late goal could give us a boost heading to Spain (not least for Hojlund) but the overall performance left a lot to be desired.

This was almost as strong an XI as he could've selected yet they struggled throughout the match to create enough clear-cut chances even against 10 men.

He will need a lot of these players to not only recover quickly, but pull up their socks because play anything like this on Thursday, and the tie maybe over after the first leg.

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Ratings

Onana - 6

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Yoro - 6.5

Maguire - 6.5

Shaw - 5

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Mazraoui - 6.5 MOTM

Casemiro - 6

Bruno - 5.5

Dorgu - 5.5

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Garnacho - 5.5

Mainoo - 5.5

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Hojlund - 6

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Ugarte - 5.5

Lindelof - 6

Mount - 5.5

Chido - 6

Eriksen - 6

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Ruben Amorim - 6.5

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Final Thoughts

Better than losing, but still not a win.

More than that, I think the performance wasn't one that gave me much encouragement for Thrusday night. There was hardly anything other than glimpses of United causing Bilbao too many problems.

We had to wait for Bournemouth to go down to 10 men and score deep into added time in order to get something from the game which isn't good enough.

Nonetheless, a late goal and a point at what has been a difficult place for a lot of teams this season could give everyone a surge of energy that we will need for that semifinal.

Hopefully there's no injuries as well because some of Bournemouth's tackles...

Thursday, that's the one.

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Rasmus Hojlund scores 2nd goal in eight games for Man Utd | Image via Manchester United official X (@ManUtd)