Honestly I don’t think we were that bad.

It was clearly the game plan to soak pressure and hit them on the counter. Bruno practically confirmed they were planning to sit deeper this game and counter in the post match.

People can think that wasn’t the right plan but the manager makes the plan and the team executes it. In this case the plan was executed fairly well imo. Ten Hag also expressed satisfaction with the performance after the match which he wouldn’t have done if he didn’t feel players weren’t playing to his instructions.

We defended well for most of the match until near the end when we were playing with Maguire and Evans and the game was more open. It very nearly worked had a couple of calls gone our way. I thought we did well passing with the back line against the Arsenal press. We wore down the press later in the game and that’s when we started to see the midfield getting more involved and we had better passing sequences/looked more in control.

I was impressed with how Hojlund changed up the game with his hold up and physicality to win the ball. It wasn’t always pretty but it gave us a much better outlet than Martial.

This game could’ve gone either way imo but the ending really favored Arsenal obviously