Quote Originally Posted by SWv2 View Post
I am not disagreeing with you on GX at centre-half but his lack of pace was not the issue for the 3rd goal.

Pogba picked the ball up after it was carelessly lost by a combination of Lacazatte and Ozil, he then ran over half the pitch (at pace) right through the centre of our midfield and was not once challenged or even threatened with a challenge.

Have a look again and watch how Guendozi and Ozil make their way back and compare to Pogba. Guendozi in particular was not even ahead of the play when possession was lost.

Xhaka backed off, pace was not the problem.

Even then when the shot was badly parried out to Martial who puts it away the cameras keep running and still no sign of AMN in the right back position (he had actually been ahead of the ball when we lost it).

Plenty of errors but singling out GX in this case is incorrect.
I'm not sure I singled out Xhaka for the goal. Torreira and Guendozi were the two that came to mind at the time, poor Xhaka had no idea what to do with himself as he often doesn't at CB. On reflection Cech was culpable.

The point I am making is that a fluent Man U could have taken us apart a further 4 or 5 times. Losing possession when pressing is one of those things.

It happens to all teams when chasing. Xhaka's lack of pace forced us to leave an enormous gap between defence and midfield, this gave Pogba around 50 metres to run into freely. Especially, as you say when Guendozi and Torreira had seemingly forgotten that creation isn't the main part of their role.