Derby day to learn from.

     As all of us from around the globe just finished watching the Manchester derby, from a football fan's perspective, it was a super entertaining game and that's how big games should be, not like the snoozefest we had last year. However, for once, the buildup to this game was not about the players, but rather, about the two best managers in the game as of now, Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola. Certainly a first time in a Manchester derby where the managers took centre stage to prove their worth.

     As a Manchester United fan, I was extremely excited and pumped for the game, reading all sorts of stats and watching press conferences to see how the managers played their "mind games" but this was a fairly friendly one as it's still early days in the league. Moving on to the actual game, when I read the team sheet this evening, I was pretty surprised to see Lingard and Mkhitaryan on the team as Mourinho especially does not tinker with his team that often. Lingard, of course, just coming back from an injury did not look sharp and Mkhitaryan who hasn't started a game, (personally I thought he would be good for this game) but he looked lethargic as well.

     It was a game of two halves, with City dominating the first half and us in the second pushing for that equaliser. Personally I thought we made critical errors in the middle of the park today and were punished with some quick passing and interchange by the City players. Unfortunately for us, Blind had a shocking game as well, making two poor judgments in the two goals. On the other hand, Rashford and Herrera completely changed the game when they came on, shouldn't be too long before those two get a place in the starting 11. But all in all, I believe this is a lesson to learn from and I'm sure we will learn from this defeat. In hindsight, it would have been easy to say that Jose made tactical mistakes in the lineup, but he knows more than us in terms of what goes on the training ground and so on. After all, the manager has the final say. Learn from it and we move our attentions to Feyenoord midweek and Watford next weekend. "Win, lose or draw United till I die."

-E14-