Michael Carrick’s first game in charge of Manchester United saw them get a vital win against Villarreal. The Red Devils now sit top of the group and thanks to the other result are guaranteed to progress from the group stages. Here are five things that we learnt.
2nd Half FC
Last night, the first half performance was pretty poor. It felt like we were being outplayed in the midfield area. We didn’t have loads of noticeable huge mistakes. It just felt like they were completely in the driving seat for the first half. They did have a few decent chances in the first half, which thanks to some stellar saves from David de Gea didn’t alter the scoreline.
It wasn’t until the second half when things started to look more in United’s favour. The changes made in the second half I think helped that massively. Marcus Rashford looked really sharp, and a massive improvement on Martial. Again, not that Martial did anything massively wrong, he just didn’t really do all that much. And we can probably say the same for swapping Bruno for Donny. These changes just seemed to give United that extra sharpness and added impetus. After that we saw a lot more chances and good passages of play. All of which led to the opening goal.
Putting some things right
This was the first time in ages that we saw United win and it feel pretty comfortable. And that was something that had needed fixing. Previously in the season when we had won games, it felt like we always had to do it the hard way. Concede first and then wait for some dramatic comeback. And at the end of the day, we needed to win this game if we wanted to qualify. And we did just that, and now we’re through to the last 16.
We needed to start keeping clean sheets. And last night, we managed to stop them from scoring. I think the back four had a pretty quiet night overall. And sometimes that can be exactly what you want. No one shone has having a world-class performance, but no one really made any catastrophic errors either. David de Gea did make some crucial saves, some of which felt like watching him back in his prime again, which was great to see. Going into last night there were so many things that had been going wrong. And it just felt like we’ve started to change a couple of those things. Like keeping a clean sheet or putting away our chances.
Sancho Shining Bright
Jadon Sancho has been something of a shining light in what has been a very dark period for Manchester United. The past few games he has put in good performances. He has looked sharp, building up passages of play and looking to create chances. And last night was no different. If anything he stepped it up another level. The finish for his goal was outstanding. And not only that he created some really good chances on top of that. He looked really good, particularly when Rashford came on. Hopefully the two of them can build something of partnership. And get a better understanding of each other, and when to swap sides, or rotate or run in behind. Hopefully we can see that relationship blossom into something that becomes more of a consistent front three for United.
Ronaldo does what he does best
Talking of fantastic finishes, was it ever in doubt that Ronaldo was going to score in the Champions League. Obviously, it was a result of a mistake from their goalkeeper. But, you have to give credit to Fred, who actually had a pretty good game, for the pressure he was putting on the opposition in the first place. And then the awareness and pure goal-scoring instincts in Ronaldo took over. He has continued his record of scoring in all six games of the Champions League so far this season.
Still a way to go
I don’t think anyone is kidding themselves by thinking that we’ve won one game and now all our problems are over. There are still issues with the midfield. Maybe going with the 4-3-3, as we saw last night, can work going forward rather than the 4-2-3-1. But ultimately, the people in that midfield still worry me. Especially when we consider some of those top teams who we are going to have to come up against.
This Sunday against Chelsea really worries me. If we played like we did in the first half against Villarreal against Chelsea, they are going to punish us. We can’t afford to give them the kind of time and space that we did in this game. But hopefully, some of our big game players, our match-winners can turn it on and put on a really good performance on Sunday. Hopefully, that could be enough to get a win and really start to lift the mood around Manchester United at the moment.