A number of unusual poor decisions which I felt from the Gaffer against Brighton:
1) Taking off McT only in the 85th min. Dude did not offer much. Surely nail in coffin that he is not good enough for United's 1st team. Seems to save his best only for Scotland.
2) I was baffled Eriksen was allowed to play the whole game. He was completely gassed maybe from the 60th min onwards. And was anyone similarly exasperated with his corner kicks? They were low & very poorly taken. We were wasting set pieces (unless ETH instructed him not to whip in high corner balls). Should have been subbed off way earlier.
3) ETH made his tactical changes way too late. Even the commentators mentioned it was surprising nothing changed and no subs at half time.
4) This to me was critical - It was completely shocking he took off Hojlund, 1 of our most energetic & direct players (who just scored a brilliant finish leaving VAR aside, goodness), for Martial (delivered nothing for 35 min as expected). He lost the OT crowd and the fans' support here. In SAF's time, he would have kept his main striker on and thrown another striker(s) on! (That's how we won 1999 Final, no?).
5) Garnacho, another direct, pacey player who can lift the crowd and stretch Brighton's flanks, came on way too late in 85th min. I mean seriously, what does ETH expect him to do in 5 min?
6) We saw within what, 10 min (?), what a young, hungry player like Hannibal can bring in with the type of energy, positivity and bravery. For the crap we were seeing from the supposedly more "senior" players, I would rather we play the younglings more often and send a strong message to the whole squad.
We essentially lost to Brighton's B Team, considering they had a no of key players out. And we have Onana to thank too for playing his part in making 3 key saves. Else the score would have been 1-6.
Shocking game. Again, we have the odd loss here and there during SAF's time at OT but this was different and we were so completely outplayed and lost the crowd. Harrowing.
