Well! That was a bit more worrying than it needed to be!
Ronaldo FC wins it for us. Krul had two lucky saves earlier (one from Lingard, another with his shins) so him making a mistake for Ronaldo's 3rd is fair. Edit: if Krul had kept his feet planted instead of that little shuffle step to his left right before Ronaldo hit the ball, he would have had more than a fingertip on the shot and would have saved it, so I call that a Krul mistake, as great as the kick was, it was savable.
Sancho, Lindelof, Elanga, DeGea had very good games. Mata came on and was instantly the best player on the pitch. Good subs from RR because it was like we were playing not only without a central midfield but also without a defense. I rewatched the goals and Telles' positioning was suicidal. He kept getting sucked towards the ball and leaving 1 or 2 Norwich players free at the back post.
Lindelof bailed us out at least twice with last-minute interceptions. He had a really strong game.
Dalot showed flashes and his sliding effort in our box probably saved the points for us. Both he and Telles are really being shown up as just not there defensively, although I think both are better at getting forward than the 2 nominally ahead of them (AWB, Shaw). If we are going to gamble with our fullbacks bombing up the wing, someone needs to drop and fill, and no one was.
If we play like this on Tuesday it's going to be a bloodbath.
Pogba was brilliant and abysmal. Sublime skill then casual as feck and sloppy. Can he even sprint? I'm not sure, he does a sort of gallop that's faster than walking but you never seem him really stretching his legs.
Bruno made one of his now trademarked bad passes that usually end up in the opponents scoring. Today, we got lucky. It's just not coming off for him lately, maybe it's fatigue or maybe he's trying too many risky passes, but he's been on a massive downward trajectory for awhile now.
Rashford, good god man, what has happened to you? He's got nothing in his locker now except speed, he can't move with the ball, can't beat a man. I would rather have seen one of the two ballyhooed youth come on in his stead. Rashford is not only not contributing he's an actual detriment to the team, take him out of the firing line and let him regroup.
Maguire was good not as rubbish as he has been, except he did his usual stand rooted to the spot while pointing at opponents, as if that's going to magically cover that player. He can do basic defending, repel aerial balls and that's about it. He's so, so limited as a player and that's down to his lack of mobility, which makes his positioning awful because he can't recover, and then he panics. He's nowhere near being an elite level player. His diagonals out to Telles were good at giving us space and time, the only time he messed that up was when he tried to bomb one to Ronaldo. Maguire is far too static for my liking, gets stuck on his heels and just acts like a cone. He might survive the first season under ETH but not the second.
replaced by Marcus Rashford
replaced by Juan Mata
replaced by Nemanja Matic
