Massive overreaction here. I personally think it was a very good game for our preseason. It's much more beneficial to play a good team and lose than to roll over teams.
Positives:
1. Darmian! Great improvement to Valencia, very solid in defense, his crossing is 10x better and he was pretty decent at LB too.
2. Shaw - I like what I see very much and I'm pretty excited for him have a proper season with us.
3. Pereira - very promising, he can be a wild card for us, adding creativity when teams are hard to break. Only thing he needs to work on is his set pieces, if he is going to take them.
4. Schweinsteiger - he still looks unfit, but he was spraying pinpoint passes and showed his no nonsense tackling. Pair him with mobile CM like Schneiderlin and he will be great.
5. Memphis - great strength, speed, nice touches - very exciting. He was mobbed by 2-3 PSG players most of the time and still had couple chances to score.
6. Rooney - his first touch was much better than usual, he linked up well with Memphis - nice lay-off for for Memphis's volley - on another day it would've gone in.
7. Blind - he actually didn't do that bad as a CB - he wasn't at fault for either goal. I don't think he should be first choice, but he can provide cover.
8. Johnstone - great talent, very composed with the ball in his feet. I can see him becoming our first choice in the future.
Negatives:
1. The whole team looked very tired and off the pace, lots of mistakes and lacks of concentration - probably because of traveling and hard training sessions before the game.
2. The pitch - very weird bounce, took us a while to adjust. Good thing we didn't get any injuries.
3. DDG - very uncharacteristic mistakes, I hope it's because of tiredness (see #1) and not because his mind and hart are no longer here.
4. Jones - at fault for both goals, can't excuse him with tiredness (see #1), because he has shown this lack of concentration many times in the past.
5. Carrick and Mata - uncharacteristic mistakes, I hope it's tiredness (see #1)
6. Lack of creativity in the final third - other than Pereira and Memphis no one was willing to take risks.
So overall the positives outweigh the negatives, especially because some of the negatives might give LVG a clearer picture of our shortcomings and force him to look for solutions. For example he already commented that he needs to think about Jones starting as a CB - it's pretty safe to say Smalling will be our first choice. The lack of creativity in the final third might give him justification in front of Woody to break the bank for a creative attacking player like Reus or Griezmann. Also people complaining that LVG is gambling everything on Rooney are very naive to think that he is not working on other options. Last year he was bigging up Cleveley - made him a captain, told the press Cleverley is his man, etc. - 2 weeks later he shipped him to Aston Villa. I'm not saying he will sell Rooney, but rest assured - all this talk of Rooney being the main man doesn't mean LVG is not thinking about plan B and plan C.
