Manchester United returned to action on Sunday for the first time in the 2019/2020 Premier League season and enjoyed a 4-0 win over bitter rivals, Chelsea. Here is what we learned from the game.
Ole deserves time
Manchester United have sacked coaches over the past 4 years. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, as it stands now, is a fan favourite (mostly) and also a supporter of the club. Given that he has shown since his arrival in December last year, he surely deserves time and backing. His man-management, tactics and training methods are reaping bountiful gifts so far and he needs time to improve further.
Forget the price, Harry Maguire was needed
Last year, Manchester United conceded goals mainly because of poor defending. It was clear this season that we needed some new faces in the backline. Harry Maguire’s composure and leadership qualities plus his physicality and clever play are what United needed and his arrival so far is paying off his world record fee. United still have a problem of starting badly as one characteristic of last season was us starting on the back foot and hoping to break through later on in the game. This was still seen in our game against Chelsea as Chelsea was the better team in the first half and we were lucky to be leading 1-0 at half time. We really need to work on that ahead of the Wolves game.
Giving Youth a Chance is Working
Manchester United squad against Chelsea had an average age of 24years old. It is worth noting that the older players like Chris Smalling, Ashley Young, Nemanja Matic all sat out of the game. The absence of the older players were not missed at all. What was excellent to see was that Axel Tuanzebe was on the bench ahead of Smalling or Rojo, showing how the youngster has impressed Ole and is seen as an improvement to the current squad. Hopefully Dalot can join the bench against Wolves instead of Ashley Young and Fred ahead of Matic.
Left flank fast becoming the weak link
Luke Shaw was last year debatably named Player of the Season. That was just an indication of how average our team was. The arrival of Aaron Wan-Bissaka has exposed how weak Luke Shaw is bad during the Chelsea game, Maguire kept covering Luke Shaw most of the time. Whether this was because Rashford struggled to track back on many occasions or not is something that needs to be reviewed. Luke Shaw needs to improve massively or else we need urgent recruitment in that area in the January transfer window.