What i saw was players afraid of playing the ball on the ground. We had no players who could actually retain possession. We had 5 mins in the start where we played with some intensity, as a home team would normally do, but the game settled quickly and Sevilla took control in midfield. We had one chance in the first half with Fellaini, but that was really it. The Lukaku chances wasn't even chances, one was a punt from out the box and one he didn't even get a touch on. You could see our main plan was to get it to Fellaini. I don't think de Gea passed it to our defenders once, he always kicked it up to Fellaini. The game was lost with the players chosen and the tactics we had deployed for the day. Introducing Pogba to midfield with Matic and Lingard was just a car crash waiting to happen, we have seen that several times this season.
The players was certainly not without blame, but the manager has to take most of it.
It's not the first time we've seen that reaction though is it (afraid of playing the ball on the ground)? So is that a consequence of tactics somehow if it's happened in games where United had all of their attacking players on the pitch? It sounds more like an excuse to me ("the players play scared because Mourinho forces them to play good defense"), but Mourinho does have to take some blame for not knocking that trait out of the players by now.
It was a stupid comment and i take it back. What i meant is that it easy to spin it this way for Mourinho, and simply say that the players are not doing what he wants. I don't see what was so different from this Brighton game and to all the other matches we've won. Plenty of times we have needed some special quality, wether that's from a Martial/Matic/Lingard screamer or a cross into the box for Lukaku to head in. I don't remember too many swashbuckling team goals this season.
I'm not even complaining about the way we played, i thought it was fine against Brighton. We won that's what matters. Mourinho didn't think many of the players did too well though.
It might be that Mourinho's style of offense just doesn't work with a random collection of good players. He requires a ton of thinking from his players, forcing them to work out the situation on their own. But when they're tired or scared, their thinking gets muddled and they play like sh*t on offense. That's how I'm reading it.
I don't think Mourinho complained about the players' performances after the Brighton game, did he? I thought he complained about their lack of character: hiding from the ball. That's way, way worse than a bad performance. I hope that point isn't lost on people here.
The perfect situation was when Martial and Rashford was battling for that LW spot. One of them played a bad match, then the other got the chance and vice versa.
Alexis Sanchez came in to the side which resulted in Martial and Rashford getting shunted out on the right. I do hope that Mourinho can get something out of our attackers, because he said himself that he won't buy any in the summer.
I agree, but only in hindsight. Imagine the meltdown this place would have suffered if Mourinho had said, "nah, I've got Martial and Rashford already. I don't want world class Alexis Sanchez in my squad."