Overall, not a bad game. First half I thought we were excellent. Second half you'd expect them to come out and have a go, but we didn't calm them down as quickly as we should have done. You have to accept they might be in the ascendency for maybe 10 mins, but then you find a way to wrestle control back from them. In the end we didnt really get back on top until the last 15 minutes. However the end of the game was actually pretty ok, bar that last chance for Justin.
Defence is looking very good right now. Varane was awesome, MOTM for me I think. Martinez and Dalot were good too. Malacia was a little more patchy, but I like the fact that the guys is constantly involved, the game doesn't just pass him by, even if he does make a few mistakes. We don't seem to be giving anything away easily at the moment, every chance by the other team has to be earned.
Midfield likewise was decent. Casemiro was a rolls royce when he came on, so while Scott had a good-ish game, its a no brainer for Casemiro to be starting at the weekend. Eriksen was great as well. Bruno was a little more frustrating, going back to his usual thing in the second half of going for the 1% pass when what we really need to do is take control of the ball. He worked weirdly well out right though, maybe something to try again in the future?
Up front was our main problem. Sancho was ok without being great, Rashford was poor, Elanga was worse. Nothing sticks up front. If its not a ball in behind they can't do anything with it. It makes retaining possession an uphill struggle because the midfield has to do it all by themselves. We looked better when Ronaldo came on, but Antony and Martial need to get in the team asap.
I think its obvious the confidence is slowly coming back, but we don't have that deep sense of certainty that you get on long unbeaten runs. The thing that disappeared in the second half was the confidence to play the ball in tight spaces. I'm pretty confident that had we scored a second in that first half and given ourselves a cushion, we'd have cruised though the second half. But only being a goal up made us seem nervous and we didnt deal with the pressure. If we can grind our way to some more results, that confidence in our own ability will come.