Negative notes: Last night, from the 60th minute onwards, was probably the worst I have seen a proper first team play at United in a decade or so of watching them. It was that bad. It wasn't through lack of hard work by some players, but sadly - Smalling excepted - those players were not having a good night (hi, Hernandez) despite their efforts and their passes and control were horrid. They body language displayed by our team was at times pretty bad, too. There was notably a distinct lack of leadership in the side - the only player I saw consistently ordering other players around was Jonny Evans. I have no idea how good he is as a leader, but we need more players capable of doing that. Januzaj, Hernandez, Kagawa, Welbeck, Buttner, Rafael, Smalling... none of these guys are likely to be motivating the others or chastising them when they cock up, they're just not those kind of players. Fletcher and Carrick, not sure. De Gea has his moments but he's not that strong just yet. It was one of those rare occasions when I was really hoping Giggs would get brought on.
Neutral notes: The first 50-60 minutes weren't amazing but there were strong attacks and we weren't at our worst, either. I will point out that we were most definitely at our best when Kagawa was in the hole. It wasn't Rooney-level quality he provided, but he provided the best final ball of any of our players. Januzaj had the best moments of our attackers by some distance when you consider "quality AND quantity", but he struggled massively when put into the hole at the time when Kagawa was put on the wing, and he made some really poor mistakes to balance out the quality. Kagawa was taken off on the 60th minute, and suddenly we would get to just outside their box and kind of pass it sideways a lot, nobody was making a run and nobody was making a great pass. It was painful to watch.
Positive notes: We still won the match. If it were a Premier League game we'd have won 1-0, if it were a Champions League tie we'd have gone through before extra time kicked in, and the second they hit a goal in we didn't give up and we snatched one back immediately. Also, this Mata stuff is looking like it will actually happen! Juan Mata (get it?) sorted, just about five other Matas to take care of after this.
Was a rough game to watch, really hard to take watching us play that badly. I tried to focus on Mata's probable signing and on NZ's victory over India in the cricket, of which highlights were playing just before the United match on Sky. Yay!
EDIT: Dammit, not again. I'm closing that other thread, I keep getting confused. *moves a couple of posts over*
