Utd had a simple and good game plan, that didn't require them to be at their best.
1. Press high and disrupt our build up (which we never exploited, especially as they doubled up on the wings and left huge space elsewhere we never took advantage of).
2. Get wide in attack and exploit the space behind the wing backs. Queue first goal: good passing stretching the play, find mata who is running in and makes a great finish.
3. Use long balls to fellaini to immediately establish themselves in the attacking third and put us under pressure. But that strategy did not lead to any of their goals, it just seemed to disrupt our play.
We also shot ourselves in the foot, again being much too slow and in several instances on different wave lengths.
I also thought it interesting that everyone was laying into Blind before the match but at LB, he gave them huge width and could quickly change play or ping the ball deep and pretty accurate, or play it calmly back into circulation. He got caught out a few times by clever runs but still. Utd made that pitch fucking huge for us, I thought, and exposed those gaps behind the WBs by moving the ball all over quickly, by the time we're arriving to pressure its already on the other wing. See Mata's first goal, again.
They attacked our weakness and did a good job of it for 30 minutes and a good enough job of it the rest of the match. We failed to exploit their weaknesses (by being slow as all hell in possession and pressuring but not pressing hard to cause errors on that error prone back line).
Seems like we should have switched to a 3412 or even a 41212 diamond after the first went in, and attacked their weaknesses and nullified their game plan. But I don't know shit about it, really.
