How an earth can you write it off as irrelevant? Yes we lost the same fixture last season, yes we had a game less in preparation, yes there is the covid situation, yes there were a couple of players on the bench who wouldnt be due to isolation.....but these are excuses.
Did you see other sides looking as sloppy as us in there first games of the season? Every side have had the same problems of covid, part of our isolated players problem was due to there stupidity.
Yesterdays game was extremely relevant to where we are in my opinion, total opposite of irrelevant. We still have a world class keeper making foolish errors, we still have a centre back simply not good enough in Lindelof.....if Bailly isnt getting played ahead of him, sell him. We are playing TFM as our second right back....who isnt a right back. We still have a vastly over rated player in Pogba who for all his qualities is consistently sloppy. We still have no player to cover properly for Matic not playing, just 4 Pogbas role. We still have a second choice player back up for both wings who is a championship level player. We also have Fernandes who I believe is a very good player but isnt Eric Cantona as he appeared the first couple of months here, he isnt going to consistently keep putting in those performances, there will be many like the back end of last season despite his incredible work rate and desire.....I am not criticinsing in any way here, just saying we cant rely on Fernandes to perform or we dont week in week out, as that is currently the case.
We also as of the moment have TFM, Dalot, Smalling, Jones, Rojo, Perreira, Mata, Lingard......yet again no clearing of the deadwood.
Look at the business all the other top sides have done, we havent. VDB isnt a first team improving player of significance, is a great squad signing. But no left back cover, noo quality centre back partner for Maguire, nobody to compete with an ageing Matic, no quality second string players for the front three.
We may have finished fourth but there is so much work still needs to b edon ein and out and we have done little. This window could be an utter shambles. Anybody very confident of top four is mad. We will really struggle again to make the top four this season as things stand.