That's fair enough mate, but we did try stopping them. And we did apply the press higher up the pitch by taking a chance and leaving their fullbacks unmarked. Antony seemed to have been instructed to close down Van Dijk, which left Robertson unmarked with the insurance policy of Dalot, Fred and Varane to cover. But what ended up happening was that Dalot shifted towards Robertson, leaving Fred to drop in to mark Gakpo and Fred got his bearings wrong and Varane followed that up with making another mistake by allowing Gakpo to come inside to shoot on his favoured right foot. We failed to execute the press as a collective and that one moment was the difference in the first half.
In the second half, Shaw plays a very poor pass, which gives Liverpool another goal. We've given Liverpool a 2-0 lead on a plate at that point and have to now chase the game, which brought more misery due to poor play, poor discipline, and unprofessional behaviour by some of the players. That second half performance from when Shaw made the error for 2-0, needs to be scrutinised by the Erik ten Hag and I'm sure it will.
I'm absolutely seething with the performance yesterday and I can't put into words how I disappointed I am. But I'm still very upbeat about the rest of the season and I expect us to win one more trophy and finish in the top 4. But I wouldn't expect United to play free flowing football until they've addressed the problems in the build up phase, which allows opponents who are adept at pressing high to cause us difficulty, hence Erik ten Hag is having to compromise on his principles of play.
And as bad as the result was yesterday, if we played Liverpool again next week, I would expect a much closer game.