What I see is a squad that is still shellshocked by their poor performances earlier in the season and perform well under their ability. The talent is there to easily beat sides like Southampton and Brighton but these players lack confidence in themselves and their teammates. Their hesitation results in passes that aren’t made and shots straight at the keeper.
And let’s be honest: we have an incredibly weak link in midfield when Fred and/or McTominay are on the pitch.
There’s only so much digging out of the hole that’s possible this season but we’re capable of more performances such as what we saw last night. Not great, but good enough to dig out the result. We’ll get hammered by stronger sides soon, but if we can beat clubs we’re supposed to beat I’ll call that progress.
Fred and McTom have their issues, no denying in that but they are prominently in the "with the ball" department. Considering we played both of them as a double pivot, we should have been at least more stable. Both these players were bad yesterday - other teams play with even worse players in midfield and at least get compact against the ball.
That is my main issue from todays game: I could live with RR deciding to take the 1st half slow. Let Brighton get off their steam and take it back to then in 2nd half. But I don't understand, why we aren't setting up for it then. RR had to remind players in the first half of the formation 4-2-3-1. If you want to conserve energy and let the other team have the ball, thats a legit approach but when it was that, we didn't do a particularly bad job.
It is a bit worrying to see some people dismissing the chances Brighton got, while seeing the great trend in ours... Just look at the buildup for the headed chance that forced the save out of DDG. It is freightening.
I’ve watched the game back today, albeit an hour version, and whilst I’m not exactly happy with the overall performance I’m genuinely not sure what some of you expect at the moment?
Brighton dominated the ball first half but didn’t threaten much. De Gea made that cracking save but it seemed pretty comfortable even if not something you want to see on your own patch.
Second half United pressed high and had much more urgency. They started playing 5-10 yards higher up the pitch. This led to the Ronaldo goal and Dunk sending off.
After that we had much more of the ball, and created the better chances, although as time went on and we didn’t get the second anxiety grew and Brighton held the ball a bit more even if they created little other than the pot shot off the bar and the Welbeck chance near the end.
Given Brighton have drew twice with Chelsea, scored two and held Liverpool at Anfield and also taken points off Arsenal, they aren’t a bad team. They look after the ball well and are well drilled. We aren’t the only team that’s had to concede possession against them.
Ultimately yes our play is still disjointed but you have to understand the reasons why that is. Despite this our recent issue has been converting the chances we make into goals. This in turn puts pressure on the fragile midfield and defence as we’ve found ourselves hanging on to narrow leads which should be already put away. That happens to every single team in such circumstances though and isn’t anything new. You have to take your chances.
Undoubtedly losing Greenwood has hurt us along with the form of Rashford, the Ronaldo drought and Cavani being quite flakey. There’s only really Sancho kicking on.
If our forwards can get some form and confidence I genuinely think feeling will change. Converting 1-0 in to 2-0 is huge during a game and we need to start doing it quickly given the chances we are making.
I think we expect that we get better faster. Yesterdays game could have been a 1:1 copy of an Ole game from a year ago. I for one feel bad to criticize Ole for it but calling it visible progress under RR. I mean we did improve in some aspects, but the steps seem to be not as big as some describe them to be. We may be due to a rough awakening when we play more difficult games. Lets see, hopefully, it is some sort of plateauing.
Just to be clear, in no way shape or form am I critisizing the manager, I fear that I overstated the quality of our squad. But I have no issue to admit that I am starting to get a little bit worried. While we are a bit more stable at the back, it doesn't take much in form of speed of play and conviction to really challenge us. In attack we are also a bit more stable and our xG seems to be on an upward trend, but chance creation is still in issue in my eyes, as it seems to be very erratic. The improvements might as well be Sancho coming into form as the improvements I hoped the new manager would implement. I also don't really like the fact that RR didn't manage to convince the club to get a new player in in January. I am also a bit suprised how fast he seemingly dismissed his ideas (even if the reasoning behind is understandable). I wasn't expecting that - not a stick to beat him with but I wished he would have been more assertive.
Your description of how good Brighton was against other teams is all good and well, but we played against only ten of them for 35 minutes. Which coincided with us getting better. Well yeah, being a men up makes things easier, doesn't it? To me it doesn't feel right to call our play good or better when the opponent is on such a disadvantage. I am sure most on here were on the edge of their seats till the very end, don't know about you but the level of control wasn't as I would have hoped it to be against 10 men.
I agree about the issues with finishing of chances, it invites too much pressure on the team. You are also right about our attack being really fecked with Greenwood gone, Ronaldo going through a drought and Rashford, Cavani and Bruno being subpar for such a long time. No attack in the world can do a proper job with that many issues. Considering this, we are doing quite well.
I am genuinely interested in the games against the more difficult opponents. I still suspect some of the players not really turning up when it isn't a big occasion. Lets see in the champions league and the coming weeks. It is a brutal schedule.