That's a sore one, the way victory seemed snatched away from us, but there was a lot of positives today.
I thought we looked good on the ball in deep and central areas. The ability of Onana and Martinez in particular to hold the ball in central areas for extended periods was promising. You can see we wanted to build up slowly from deep and then transition quickly, but the ball tended to fizzle out as soon as it reached the halfway line. But it's a base at least and prevented Arsenal from exerting extended periods of pressure. Once Martinez went off and Maguire came on we just couldn't do that anymore, and it's noticeable Arsenal ramped up the pressure after that.
The big problems are still up front. Martial was totally absent, he looks shot. Antony gets involved but lacks any end product. Rashford was ok, but isn't the kind of player to get involved in build up at the best of times.
If Hojland was fit from the start to replace the missing Martial; if Amrabat was playing instead of Eriksen to screen that first goal; if we had Varane and Martinez seeing out the game instead of Maguire and Lindelof/Evans, does that change the outcome? I feel like it might.
So I'm not going to toss myself off a building for that performance, even if the way it ended made it somehow sting more than if we'd performed worse.