A funny thing happened today... when I was looking at the fixture list & saw 'West Ham United v Manchester United'; I actually thought West Ham were the favourites... I was thinking 'Man! The world is changing lol'...
And it proved to be true as the Hammers dealt out a glorious, confidence-enhancing 2-0 victory over the former greats at a rapturous London Stadium. For Man Utd, I'm afraid the problems have been there for a long time liao: What type of team do they want to be? What is their philosophy & identity? How do they want to play? What do they wanna do? I'm afraid all these were apparent in another ragged, disconsolate, quite-desperate performance again.
On the other hand, West Ham were confident, vibrant and motivated. Witness their beautiful structure of play: Fabianski confident in goal (witness a miraculous stop from Harry Maguire); Issa Diop & Angelo Ogbonna committed in centre-defence. Buffeted by the impressive England international Declan Rice and powered in midfield by the unflinching Mark Noble. They had two mercurial, threatening wingers in Andriy Yarmolenko & Felipe Anderson; plus a classy, high-quality centre-forward in Sebastien Haller.
The two goals were things of beauty: Yarmolenko; being the spontaneous genius he is; drifting into an offside position then floating back; and not knowing what to do until he did it; a supreme, balanced shot that nestled in the perfect position. Left-back Aaron Cresswell; who had an earlier sighter; planting a magnificent free-kick past David de Gea to send his team-mates wild.
Having sold Romelu Lukaku & Alexis Sanchez; and with Marcus Rashford forced off injured; Ole Gunnar Solksjaer was forced to field Daniel James up-top; with Jesse Lingard behind; Andreas Pereira on the right; and youngster Angel Gomes on the left. It was quite pathetic; and it did not work. This is all turning into a joke.
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