This was abysmal. Ridicuclous. Unworthy. De Gea and Maguire were like elephants playing in a porcelain store. Sancho played as if he was the porcelain in that same store. I will let DDG and HM off for now. Enough bad things have already been said in the last couple of hours about their performances. I will just leave it at "Disasterclass of the season". They were not alone though.
AWB was bad. Dalot was bad. Casemiro was bad. Eriksen was bad. Sabitzer was bad. Martial, Rashford and Shaw were really bad. Wout was just Wout. That leaves Lindelöf and Fred, who were both okay, and Antony, who was good, and very lonely.
Wait. I did not forget about Sancho.
I am worried about him. We all know, that he has had issues this season. They are not gone. He should never have played yesterday. He pulled out of every tackle and he avoided doing runs, making him unavailable for passes. Eriksen did pass him a few times where he could have taken a player on, but he just stopped the attack. Every time. When he got the ball, he always opted to play the fastest and simplest pass possible, and he never took a man on. In short. He was scared as hell of making mistakes, and choosing the obvious solution to avoid them. Trying not to get on the ball. Hiding. This has been going on for weeks now, but yesterday was the pinnacle. He was'nt the worst player on the pitch. He was'nt playing at all.
I don't write this to be mean. Sancho was undeniable a world class player at Dortmund, doing fantastic things on a weekly basis. It was'nt a stupid idea to buy him at the time. On the contrary. He was the real deal. This is no longer the case. Now he just looks like a young man in a deep deep hole. I wish for him to get out of it, but I really don't want him to be playing right now. For his, and for our sake.
Going on. We have a lot of players missing, injured or coming back from injuries at the moment. This would never had happened with Varane, Martinez and Bruno in the team. Playing with a not 100 % fit Rashford, Shaw and Martial/Eriksen not up to speed does'nt help getting results either. That is surely a part of the explanation. It is nowhere near an excuse for what happened yesterday though.
Enough has been said about the defense and DDG. I thought Lindelöf did ok. Everyone else was playing Little League.
At the other end of the pitch we were actually even worse. Three of the front four players were simply hiding, Antony being the exception. Martial, Sabitzer and Sancho made just about zero runs and Rashford can not have been ready. He did not improve anything coming on. Wout worked hard as usual, but he is to slow to get on the ball when making runs. Making runs are "the basics" for attackers. Without runs, the midfield can't create a thing. If you are not fit or too scared to want the ball, you should not be on the pitch. Period. EtH is also not innocent here.
That leaves the midfield. Sabitzer was a mistake at 10 in a game like yesterday. It should have been Casemiro and Fred behind Eriksen. We were overrun all the time, and that happened because of several things. 1: Harry and Lindelöf are too slow at playing out from defense. Same goes for AWB. That made it easy for Sevilla to dog our midfield the second they received the ball. (Martinez, Shaw and Varane are much better at this.) 2: Casemiro was left with way too much ground to cover. The centerbacks stood too deep and Sabitzer often too high, forcing Eriksen to drop too deep. Casemiros passing and tackling was'nt up to his standards as well, loosing lots of 50/50-challenges that he normally wins. 3: Eriksen. This match was a nightmare-scenario for the dane. Forced to drop deep because of the slow motion build-up from behind, and with noone but Antony making runs. That robs him of all his strengths, leaving him to defend, which is not a reason for starting him over Fred. I have seldom seen or heard him as frustrated as yesterday. He was really pissed at what was going on. 4: Sabitzer. The austrian is not Bruno. His strengths are aggression, playing fast and pressing the hell out of his opponents, shooting at every possibility. That is the Rangnick-Game, implemented with great success at RB Leipzig, where Sabitzer was a great player. That does'nt really work at Bayern or here. We don't have the players for it, and it's not our game. Other Leipzig players has had the same problems when transferred to other clubs and systems. Werner is a great example of that. As of now, Sabitzer is a hybrid, playing well at 6, 8 or 10, but only if we are standing high. With space between the lines, Sabitzer goes missing in Limbo. That's where he went yesterday.
Enough for now. Let's make the Top Four and beat the shit out of Brighton.
