It was a fantastic high octane game, almost entirely lacking in real quality, but it was the first time we played Utd at old trafford in god knows how long that I felt we both deserved to win, could win, were robbed and that we showed real fight. That felt like a Vieira/Keane era grudge match. Not quite but getting there, lacking quality from both sides but the style, the nature of the game felt similar rather than a bunch of pansies going over to get beaten up for years since that era.
THe first goal Martial dived to win the freekick, Guendouzi stopped and Martial pushed his leg out to make contact. Then a blatant offside not called allowing the goal. The second goal, entirely on our own dreadful defending. We should and could have won that at least 2-0, we had two glorious chances with Auba and Mkhi who fluffed their lines. Utd played just awful football offensively, again under MOurinho there is zero plan, the entire offence looks completely disconnected with no clue what the others are going to do.
Not happy with the result but that is the kind of fighting performance we would have lost badly 2 years ago or 7-8 years ago and everything in between.
Emery is working magic on the team but still a huge way to go. Sokratis is and was imo just someone available and short term while they spend the year lining up replacements. Kos can be great, fairly often got reds or gave away penalties in the biggest games though, but with a screwed achilles I can see him being a bit of a sicknote from now till retirement and due to age we should be replacing anyway. Mustafi is a complete joke of a defender who has to be gotten rid of as soon as possible, Kolasinac can't really defend and Bellerin I think is improving again but dropped off so badly. Torreira alone is making a huge difference defensively but we need two new longer term maybe 23-26yr old CBs to build the defence around for the next 5-6 years.
