Well, not much consensus here. Either on team performance or individual performances. But then, what with the surges of ups and downs lately, it's not easy to put one's thoughts and emotions in order.
Some thoughts.
1. I've been thinking the team now has two chances to prove to themselves and the world at large that we belong in the top echelon. This was the first, and we blew it. Match seen as a whole, City was clearly the better team. The second comes against Liverpool in 11 days.
2. That being said, it wasn't a bad performance. Especially not the first half. But we gradually slipped out of it, decreasing in crispness, rhytm and confidence, all of which looked excellent for the first 35 minutes or so. Our two best players, Bruno and Rashford, had notably weak games by their own standards. Still, at least we don't concede any goals from open play, which is good against this City team.
3. The feeling it leaves you with is this is how far we've come, at this point. Not further. We're no longer defending like mad and praying for a counterstrike against City, but that also means that we are now having to play a kind of game that demands more, and brings a different kind of vulnerability.
I wish people would stop going on so about substitutions, to which many seem to ascribe an absurdly exaggerated importance. Obviously, the right substitution at the right time can have a profound impact, but in most cases, substitutions have no significant effect on the game at all. Some people seem to imagine that if a team loses a game without having made impactful substitutions, that means the manager has messed up.
