This is one of those mornings where writing a blog feels somewhat redundant. What is there to say that you don’t already know? What can I talk about in terms of how we play the game that feels more relevant than the fact we just need to win?
What Man City did yesterday might have been a bit disheartening, but it doesn’t change a single thing about what we have to do at Old Trafford. It might well be a case that the venue is the most challenging aspect about today. We don’t have a great record there, and even if this version of Man Utd is a long, long way from the best we’ve seen, that’s still something we need to overcome.
Speaking ahead of the game, Mikel Arteta said:
If you want to win the Premier League and big trophies, you have to go to these grounds and impose yourself and beat them. That’s the journey that we are in and that’s for sure what we’re going to try to do on Sunday.
I’m fascinated by how United might approach this one. On the one hand, it’s a game they have to win to keep alive Europa League qualification, so they might come out all guns blazing. But their biggest issue this season has been how stretched they get when they do that. They leave all that space in midfield we’ve seen teams exploit time and time again, and if you give that space to players like Martin Odegaard and Declan Rice and Kai Havertz and Bukayo Saka, you’ll likely pay the price for it.
They could try and sit in and defend deep, but they’re also without some key players at the back, which could make that plan more difficult to execute. Which is to say, I don’t really know what they’ll do, and I suspect that in his preparation for this one, Mikel Arteta has considered the possibility of that variance.
As for our team, I don’t think it’ll be any different from the one we played in the last couple of games, unless there’s an injury to take into consideration. Takehiro Tomiyasu was missing from training in midweek, and the manager hinted he…
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Author : arseblog
Publish date : 2024-05-12 06:59:10
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