I think we hear these sentences a lot in media but we don't actually believe it, things like players are lazy and not up for it or thinking they have already made it etc. But several times today this was happening a lot during the match. Martial for most of the match thought he didn't have to work as hard as others, the same was the case with Lukaku, several times we had 4 players on top (Lukaku, Martial, Lingard and Sanchez) While only Lingard and Sanchez pressed with any sort of conviction the other two went into jog mode, this resulted in Newcastle easily playing it out from the back and never really pinned them back with constant pressure. Compare our pressing with City against Leicester and how their pressing resulted in several chances for City it was night and day.
Best example of our laziness is the goal we conceded, Young was shouting towards Lukaku to come back and help with the set piece, Lukaku jogged slowly and by the time the free kick was taken he could not reach the defending zone he was outside the box if i remember correctly, subsequently Pogba could not jump and then we conceded.
Another thing we obviously have huge issue is playing out from the back. With everybody moving towards at least one ball playing CB, we have our two best center backs both poor on the ball. What we need to understand is we can have Messi and Ronaldo up top, but they need to be given the ball in threatening areas to succeed. Our CB's kept passing it to Valencia who went back to them and then back to DDG who punt it forward and then headed back towards our CB's again.
Several people have touched this point, why do we look so disjointed and despite having great attacking players look so ponderous. It is simple our CB's rarely pass between the lines likewise Matic, Pogba could do it, but he needs to be the one at the end of those in between the lines passes so that he can turn and thread passes to Forwards and create chances. How many times did we get our players in between the lines during the match. All top teams pass it out from the back and find those within line passes and play through teams. We used to get away during the late Fergie years without a ball playing CB since Carrick and Scholes were amazing at it, even Giggs was good at it. Unless we sort out CB's or Matic somehow finds passing range we will keep struggling against any decent side who will press our CB's.