Manchester United concedes early goal at Old Trafford, which carries Arsenal to clinch vital 3 points despite positive performance.
Sunday’s blockbuster fixture saw Manchester United host North London club, Arsenal, in what had promised to be an exciting match. The two sides were separated by a lone goal by Ricardo Calafiori who powered home a header, from a corner. Despite United coming back into the game after that goal to dominate most part of the game, they could not find the the back of the net, throughout 90 minutes.
Calafiori’s goal, despite it standing, was seen as infringement on the keeper, who claimed the player had impeded him, which resulted in him being unable to stretch to prevent the ball from entering the net. After the goal, United picked up the pace, defending well, controlling the game, creating a lot of chances which should have seen them draw level or even going ahead to win the match.
United started with a front three of Mount, Mbuemo and Cunha, who combined really well, creating numerous attacking sequences, and posing a lot of threat to the Arsenal defence. Impressing most patronisers of the game were the two attacking additions, Cuhna and Mbuemo who created a lot of chances, and posed a lot of threat for United.
Speaking on the performance of the two new attacking players for United, captain Bruno Fernandes, praised their abilities to keep creating chances after chances and also being able to be in the right positions at all times. He acknowledges that the team understand the abilities of these two players and know how much of a threat they can be. He believes they both made really good impression and was optimistic that these two players are going to do even better in subsequent games.
Sharing his assessment of the game, Bruno Fernandes said,”It’s the first game of the season so we cannot speak about a step forwards. We conceded a goal from a set piece early on but from then on Arsenal didn’t create any chances. We created lots of chances and didn’t score so we have to do better next time. We controlled the game well, we were good on the ball“
Manager Ruben Amorim, despite the loss was very positive about his team’s performance, as he was also full of praise for the two attacking players, Cunha and Muemo. Speaking about them, he said,”Everybody can understand they are very good players for that position. It didn’t need a lot of work to feel that is their position. Sometimes you can look at the game in many ways. In the first half, Cunha has to go out because the center backs are strong. Then you have Sesko and you have a different type of player and that is important for me that we have players to play different games.”
Sharing his opinion on the Arsenal goal, Amorim had this to say: “I think you can watch the goal. I think it’s allowed, to do a lot of things, in the corners. We need to do the same. But when you touch that way, the goalkeeper, he needs to use his hands to catch the ball, not to push the players, or he chooses to push players and let the ball pass. But, again, it’s the rules, if it’s allowed, we need to do the same thing.“
Amorim believes that United ha a positive performance despite the frustrating result at the end. He acknowledges the feling that they were the better team, but still went ahead to lose the game. He expressed that he is proud of the work that they did on the field and that it is really important to take this game in their stride and move forward.”
Goalkeeper Andre Onana was left out of the squad, despite recovering from a hip injury that kept him out of preseason. Many thought that his exclusion from the match day squad was a statement to the fact that United desires to bring in a new keeper. Quizzed about this Amorim said,”No, no, no, I didn’t drop Onana from the squad, I didn’t drop one of the two from the squad. So it’s not the case of dropping Onana, it’s not putting Andre Onana with just one week [of training], without seeing a game, without time in training. And like you say, guys like Tom and Altay during the pre-season, they did a good job.“
“I think we proved today that we can win any game in the Premier League, especially against a great team like Arsenal and we were the better team. So I’m happy with the players.“, Amorim added.
Benjamin Sesko, started the game from the bench and made a really good impression on the pitch, getting into really good spaces. Rasmus Hoijlund was also left out of the squad ahead of his purported move to AC Milan.
