Creme de la crap this was.
United suck, both personnel and tactics wise. This mad decision to play a 2 man midfield with the likes of Casemiro, Fernandes and Eriksen forces them to sit back to avoid getting overrun in midfield. Today it was Casemiro and Fernandes, the latter of whom doesn’t do much defensive work anyway. The former was left on an island against 3 or 4 players at times.
We dominated the midfield for a change in the first half, routinely creating overloads to hold the ball and move forward. Maddison in particular was very comfortable on the ball with all that space he had found between their lines. Hell, even Ange’s inverted fullbacks worked like a charm for once due to how open the centre was. It’d be nice to play United every week indeed.
What happened in the second half though? United taking more risks and opening the game up was totally understandable, yet why did we gladly contribute our own fair share to that chaotic end to end stuff reminiscent of 6-a-sides? Just another instance of Ange establishing "foundations" by managing as if scoreline doesn’t exist I guess.
Our pressing still sucks, we still get away with things by the finest of margins more often than not, but beggars can’t be choosers.
Vicario for MOTM, brilliant comeback. Spence, Bergvall, Maddison and Danso also played well, credit to them.
