My random thoughts after the game are:
1) Hojlund and Varane have been playing pretty regularly for a while. But, adding Maguire for Martinez and Casemiro for Amrabat/Eriksen gives us 4 really tall, physical players and we look so much more dangerous on our corner kicks and so much better defending the opponents. When McTominay comes on to add a 5th player who is good in the air we begin to look really dangerous in these situations.
2) Without Martinez our ability to play out from the back against a high press falls off a cliff. When he and Shaw are both playing we are very good at moving the ball up the left side of the field. But, when Martinez is out we completely lose the ability to do it. Doesn't matter whether he's replaced by Maguire, Lindelof, Evans or Kwambala. None of them are anywhere near his ability at shrugging off a pressing opponent and picking out a forward pass. It has an enormous impact on the overall play of the team. It's a real shame he has been available so little this season.
3) I thought Dalot was very good both in attack and defence this game. He's really quite fast and made some good recoveries on defence. He did have one dangerously poor clearance near the end of the game but I think he was really tired by that point. Despite his effort Villa were having a lot of success attacking the gap between Dalot and Varane and I don't think either Dalot or Varane were to blame. I think either Garnacho or Mainoo or perhaps both were not positioning themselves properly to help defend that space.
4) After they scored, the stadium was really noisy and the crowd was giving lots of energy to the Villa players. They had a couple of chances soon after the goal. But, then Onana took the ball out and just stood on if for about 20 seconds and waited because no Villa player was pressing him. Then Varane and Maguire each did the same thing, rinse and repeat for what seemed like about 5 minutes. At first I was getting really annoyed that no one was showing for the ball. But, then I noticed the stadium had gone completely quiet and we had taken the sting out of the game and the home crowd. Then we went up and scored. I don't know whether they were told to slow things down by ETH or if it was the Madrid players or Onana and Maguire but it was a really pro move to settle things down at that point in the game and not something United has done often in similar situations in recent seasons.
5) Rashford seemed to be trying in the final third today. He was running at the defence and taking people on which was sort of encouraging. But, when we don't have the ball he was still so low energy. A few times our guys would press and make one of their players rush a pass so that the next player receives it in a bad position and makes another poor pass and we begin to look like we've got them under pressure and then they play it out to the player Marcus is covering and he just stands off him and lets the player calmly slow things down and re-set. He must be such a frustrating player to try and press along side. And he makes no effort to challenge for 50/50 balls or even balls that are 25/75 in his favour. So frustrating to watch.
6) I really hope Shaw will be good to go by next weekend.
