Tiny bit.
It is frustrating to look forward to us all summer, second ETH season after a good first year, new signings, an extra pre-season of getting them how he wants them to play... and then to play like that.
But on the flipside we started even worse last season and it ended up being pretty good. My only reservation is why is it happening again when we should be making progress on that front.
One big concern I have is that the main addition we made to our midfield which was meant to really improve us doesn’t fit with our other two starters, at least with how he played last night.
similarly, our expensive winger our manager wanted last year is still flattering to deceive offensively.
two caveats of course:
-Antony had a bad injury toward the end of last season, so he might take a few games to get up to speed.
-Mount and Bruno need time together to work out how they play together in front of Casemiro. After a good first season the manager has earned the time to work that out certainly but it needs to happen.
Hopefully Hojlund can add something to our setup but he’d want to be a neater fit than either of the above two.
I wonder do we still need someone in midfield to play closer to Cas because as leggy as he looked last night he was left on an island all match. I thought Rabiot could have been a great pick up on a free but I know there is baggage there. You’d think a poor enough team in disarray like wolves would be the game to get away with pushing two midfielders up but they’re an irritant for us generally and maybe Gary o neill is just good in a crisis looking at last night and last season. Amrabat could help and there are minutes for Mainoo if he can step up
there are other issues last night like Martinez playing well below what we know he can play at, so that will improve things, as well as Rashford looking worse than he has in he past in a position where he’s often not his best(though frequently better than last night it has to he said).
Winning ”those games” was a cornerstone of our success under sir Alex so a win is a win, I think we all feel differently as it’s game one and a few people were worried before about the problems we saw arising.