It's interesting taking a week out, and then signing into RedCafe.. after the game we all share immediate views and passions, part of the reason we all love the game. I thought it was an improvement, but no more than that. We showed a degree of intensity that had been lacking.. but I don't think either side 'played' good football. How many chances created etc.. it was a typical Utd-Liverpool game. At the end of our previous dismal performance, I stated that I felt we would be ok in this game, and I feel we were exactly that....ok. Rashford played with less flossin' and more direct instinct.. he should play this way all the time. When he thinks, his game drops off. That was the best I have seen from Pereira, but I don't think he, nor anyone was outstanding. I still consider him an average player at best.
However, Daniel James is our leading light so far this season, definitely. I like him, he makes things happen, and now, others are responding to his game, and not the other way around.
Liverpool played a strangely odd game... they were pretty poor, and extremely nervous. Not quite the finished product yet.
Assessing performances really is a game of relative perspective. Ok is a fair way of putting it, but relative to expectations as well as recent form United actually put in a fantastic performance really only marred by one defensive lapse of concentration. That's one too many, but still only one.
What we've struggled with this season and in recent years is putting in this kind of performance against lower table clubs. Newcastle was a perfect example of that, but not the only one.
From a Liverpool perspective, and I haven't checked RAWK to confirm this, they have to be really disappointed in their performance and must feel like they gifted us the point, even though I hold that we were flat out the better side on the day until we went into a shell for the last 25-30 minutes.
We hung on for the point, which all of us would have taken before the match, but I was disappointed to see us pull bodies back that early in the game. There's a point in time in a match, at least against a better side, when you should pull bodies back, but not at the 60-65 minute mark. Sure, Liverpool were gangstering James and it worked but we could have done more to pressure Liverpool's back line at least to take some of the pressure off our back line.
But it ended the way it did, solid performances all the way around, except for Rojo in the second half, which is the line you have to cross over between horrific -- which I think even the most partisan United supporter would concede we've displayed recently -- and outstanding, which we're still very far from displaying any time soon.