This wasn’t a particularly good night for Robin van Persie or indeed Javier Hernandez. Sadly, though, it was a considerably worse one for Ashley Young.

Van Persie and Hernandez will both have flown home in the early hours of this morning fretting over missed chances. Van Persie struck a post and saw a penalty hit the frame of the goal too while Hernandez contributed one of those misses that will turn up on terrible Christmas DVDs for years to come. Centre forwards miss chances, though. It is part of football. It happens.

Young, however, once again finds himself charged with that most anti-social offence of diving and his reputation as a lover of one of the darkest arts in the game is becoming so deeply entrenched that one wonders if he will ever be rid of it.

In fact, to call it a dark art is misleading. Many of Young’s falls and tumbles are obvious. It seems only the referees don’t see them. Tuesday night’s was not the clearest of his career. He may argue he was fouled.

Certainly there did seem to be a tug on the arm by Sociedad midfielder Markel Bergara as Young attempted to go by him in the penalty area. Crucially, though, Young seemed to take another couple of steps before going over and it is unfortunately the case that his reputation does not encourage the benefit of the doubt.

Certainly, the only person in the Estadio de Anoeta who appeared to see the incident as a penalty was referee Nicola Rizzoli. Many United players seemed to have turned their backs on the matter.

As it happened, Van Persie couldn’t convert the penalty, Sociedad goalkeeper Claudio Bravo diving to his left to perhaps get the faintest of touches on to the post. That, however, doesn’t really matter in the wider scale of things. United manager David Moyes has already spoken to Young about going down too easily under challenges and it would appear he has more work to do yet.

The 1600 United supporters who had travelled here from England will be disappointed that their team couldn’t earn the win that would have all but qualified them for the next stage of the competition in their manager’s first year. Certainly their team had enough chances.

The rest of us, meanwhile, were just thankful that there was something to talk about in the second period. This had been a dull game for the first 45 minutes and it was only when Hernandez did his best impression of a man actually trying not to score that things began to get interesting early in the second period.

At the weekend the Mexican has appeared to suggest that he is unhappy with life as an understudy at Old Trafford, endorsing on Twitter a suggestion by his international team-mate Carlos Vela that there were a queue of clubs waiting to sign him.

Well, here, he did his chances of permanent football little good at all as he moved on to a Shinji Kagawa cross from the left in the 50th minute to side foot the simplest of chances over an open goal from only six yards. Was it actually easier to score than miss? Quite possibly.

For Hernandez, that was pretty much the end of his night. He was replaced by Van Persie — as Young came on for Wayne Rooney — within a couple of minutes. For United, the plot of their evening was only about to thicken.

The two replacements had been on the field for only a minute when Young eased down the left and crossed low for Van Persie on the far side. Such is the confidence of a natural goal scorer, Van Persie didn’t even consider taking a touch. Indeed his first time shot was struck crisply but it crashed against the post before bouncing away from onrushing colleagues.

Soon came the penalty and another moment to rue. Late in the game Marouane Fellaini was rather harshly sent off for two bookings. Having received his first caution so early in the game it was slightly surprising that Fellaini had been left on. It had, at times, been quite a niggly sort of game.

Whatever, the Belgian will now miss United’s next game at Bayer Leverkusen later this month and that is a fixture that is now taking on real significance, even if Moyes and his players do have a home game against Donetsk to end their group campaign with two weeks after that.

United were the better team here on a cold and blustery night. They dominated possession for large chunks of the game in a manner that has not always been associated with them in recent years. Until the last 40 minutes, though, they just couldn’t find a killer final ball.

In the first half, Kagawa — quite impressive cutting in from the left side — drove one shot across goal and wide and then thumped another in to the arms of a goalkeeper who had positioned himself well by his near post. Hernandez, meanwhile, had a half chance smothered by a defender six yards out.

That apart, though, it was hard to get excited by the early attacking play of either side. Certainly Sociedad looked like exactly what this season had shown them to be, a rather average La Liga team.

The Basques did threaten sporadically and Imanol Agirretxe should have done better than shoot clumsily wide after a one-two with Ruben Pardo midway through the first half.

As the night ended, Moyes refused to criticise Young, citing contact from Bergara. That is the United manager’s prerogative but what is certain is that it will not spare his player from increasingly intense scrutiny over the coming weeks.

—Daily Mail