Torture
The Selection
In terms of Pochettino this was pretty much the side we all expected, with the exception of maybe Davies/Rose. I thought he may go for Rose’s pace to help combat United’s likely counter threat.
The Structure
Again, no surprises here, we started in the 4312/41212 diamond.
When Sissoko was replaced by Lamela, we maintained that format with Lamela going to the tip of the diamond and Alli dropped back to the left side 8 role. Then at half time we changed to a 4231, with Eriksen and Winks as the CM2.
A more subtle alteration of application was that Poch appeared to instruct Davies to be a bit more circumspect about getting forward, and he seemed to stay tucked in nearer to Vertonghen which was prudent, as post match Pogba spoke about how Solskjar had identified these channels – between/behind that gap our pushed on FB’s leave vacant as areas – that can be exploited.
The Game
They’d clearly set up to counter with Martial and Rashford occupying those inside channels and appeared to be playing a matching 4312, and it took us 10-15 minutes to truly settle, and in that early phase both teams had their moments.
The game was a bit to open, both teams showing some defensive vulnerability, with us making that old error of playing the high line and not pressing very well, and Utd looking like they weren’t entirely sure how to reign in some of that Solskjaer bounce and be efficiently pragmatic.
But gradually it was us who got to grips with the game better, and from about 20 minutes onwards we pretty much bossed it, seemed to have their counter covered and managed to play through their midfield, getting into several very good situations that we just couldn’t turn into chances.
To that ends, their goal was a bit of a sucker punch. Yes, it was a very careless ball by Trippier but they were a long way from danger when it happened.
The perfect shit storm of an outstanding pass by Pogba, Rashford showing way more composure than he usually shows, some sluggish defending by a ring rusty Vertonghen and one of those low shots that often seems to dribble past Lloris, combined to kick us firmly in the nuts.
The second half Pochettino switched things around, going 4231, with Eriksen and Winks as the CM2, with the excellent Winks, throughout much of it, holding the midfield together on his own as Eriksen marauded forwards to supplement the attack.
No coincidence for me that we vastly improved without Sissoko on the pitch. We now had “footballers” in all positions interacting. And interact they did.
The fact that we looked no more vulnerable with a midfield two of Eriksen and Winks, as opposed to the three with Sissoko there as well speaks volumes.
Winks was probably the stand out performer today, not just for some of the more incisive football he played in forward areas, but defensively he is clearly learning game by game with regular football, his positioning and tracking was good, and nobody tackled (5) or intercepted (3) more.
The second half was football’s version of water boarding, utter torture. So many times where we thought “this is it”, so many times salvation seemed inevitable, only for that fleeting optimism to be doused in cold water, with us left choking and spluttering in disbelief.
How we didn’t score in this half is anyone’s guess. I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like it.
We took them apart, playing with real tempo and urgency, played some really good football, and despite them pretty much parking a bus, carved United open so many times, creating absolute guilt edged chances, and although you could be slightly critical of a couple of the finishes (Alli’s and Kane’s when put through right side particularly) generally it was just a case of unbelievable bad luck and decent keeping.
If we’d actually miss hit a couple they might have bobbled in, took a deflection, gone through the keepers legs etc, but we kept hitting them true and finding De Gea in outstanding form, making some great reflex saves.
You cannot criticise the effort, work rate and pure cahones of this team, they never lay down, they threw everything at it, completely and utterly dominated the game, played at a great tempo, carved Utd open many times and hit the target with most of those chances, sometimes the gods of football just give you the finger.
I actually alluded to this a couple of weeks ago after the Bournemouth game, when we seemed to bang in five goals almost by accident. This was the footballing ying to that yang.
You could also say it was payback for the Utd away game when were were abysmal, but somehow came away with a 3-0 win.