I’m late to the party as I watched the game on the replay.
Disappointing that we couldn’t hold on to the win but as I’m sure others have said already, I would have taken that result beforehand. Good that we changed the formation for this match, 4-2-3-1 hadn’t been working previously. Very good first half, second half was expected given we were playing against the most in-form team in the world and had so many injuries. MOTM is a toss-up between Rashford, James and Pereira. But pretty much everyone played well I thought. Young was very good up until the mistake I thought.
Lee Dixon said, interestingly, that Rashford would get 40 goals a season if he was playing with Scholes, Giggs and Beckham. I don’t think he’s far wrong, I definitely think he would get 20-30. And goals aside, Rashford brings a lot of other things to the table. Five years ago, was Firmino a better players than Rashford is today? I doubt it, yet now he’s an integral part of a CL-winning side.
As for Ole, this match never had any bearing either way on his status as the manager. Hopefully we can build on this in the upcoming games, we’ll see. I’m still Ole In, as like I’ve said, I simply don’t see finishing 5th or 6th as worth yet another managerial change. I think the main focus now has to be the next transfer window because surely everyone can agree that we need more signings irrespective of who the manager is.
IMO if we stay clear of the relegation zone Ole is the best option to oversee that window, rather than bringing in someone else with different opinions on who to sign etc. There’s been a lot of chopping and changing already , we need to continue this rebuild properly and then make an assessment further on.
– Pukki or Wilson
– Håland
– McGinn
– DLP/CDM
Those signings would completely transform this team. I’m telling you all. And we would move up the table PLUS have a go at the Europa League. We can agree to disagree on Ole as the manager, but IMO we should all agree that new signings has to be a major focus. Yes four signings in January would be more or less unprecedented but we have had consecutive transfer windows where we should have signed the double amount of players that we did sign.
Håland plus Pukki or Wilson would effectively be the replacements for Lukaku and Sánchez. So not unreasonable at all IMO. Yes we have Greenwood too but he’s not yet ready for much more than cup games and substitute appearances.
Hopefully against Norwich we’ll see attack attack attack. The tactics Ole deployed when he first came in. If he can get back to that and get the backing he needs in terms of more transfers then I can totally see him turning things around.