Honestly I don’t think we were that bad.

It was clearly the game plan to soak pressure and hit them on the counter. Bruno practically confirmed they were planning to sit deeper this game and counter in the post match.

People can think that wasn’t the right plan but the manager makes the plan and the team executes it. In this case the plan was executed fairly well imo. Ten Hag also expressed satisfaction with the performance after the match which he wouldn’t have done if he didn’t feel players weren’t playing to his instructions.

We defended well for most of the match until near the end when we were playing with Maguire and Evans and the game was more open. It very nearly worked had a couple of calls gone our way. I thought we did well passing with the back line against the Arsenal press. We wore down the press later in the game and that’s when we started to see the midfield getting more involved and we had better passing sequences/looked more in control.

I was impressed with how Hojlund changed up the game with his hold up and physicality to win the ball. It wasn’t always pretty but it gave us a much better outlet than Martial.

This game could’ve gone either way imo but the ending really favored Arsenal obviously

We are a mediocre team. If that midfield doesn’t start clicking, a top 4 finish is going to be in SERIOUS doubt

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I don’t think there were any atrocities in the decisions. Arsenal we’re a better team most of the game.

We did look much better towards the end of the game when both teams were a bit more open, especially when we had a strong target man up top

What can you really say? There are decisions we can be annoyed about but Arsenal deserved the win all day long.

Hojlund looked v promising and should immediately displace Martial, Dalot had a great game at LB, Onana was good, Rashford just has to play on the left.

Rice would have been so sick in this team too, big miss for us even if the price was too high.

Given our massive injury list, I don’t think it’s a bad result + it looks much different on a scoresheet than in reality.

Game was decided by fine margins, be it the Garnacho offisde, VAR correctly overturning the penalty and Gabriel getting away with fouls in both boxes, on Hojlund it’s a rather clear penalty imo and he also fouls Evans during the Rice goal.

But because it’s United narratives are being spun, though to be fair, if Arsenal Lost this 2-1 there would also be narratives about how they are imploding despite doing a record transfer in Rice, just how football is nowadays.

Other than that, I think the team played well, it was kind of a tactical stand-off, Arsenal knew they couldn’t press because they would get fucked and United should have admittedly done better in build-up, often not passing to Antony who was in loads of space alone.

I think this game further showcases Ten Hag’s tactical nous as in the first 2 games it was clear both Wolves and TOttenham was happy to let AWB have the ball and that stifled our buildup due to his technical limitations (much like DDG did last season), so AWB was pushed further up to create space for Antony (which once again, was not taken advantage of), and build-up was done by casemiro dropping back between cbs to form a back 3 instead.

Biggest positive from this game is Hojlund, massive fucking lad, will cause issues to many teams and he is quick as fuck. I am hyped.