Vast improvement

Just a quick post match article today troops as I’m full of the cold, feeling rotten and lacking in motivation.

A much improved display then from start to finish. We finally broke the curse of conceding first, thank god because that record was becoming ridiculous.

Matip makes a huge difference to our team, both in defence and attack. Yes he scored the winner but it’s more his forward driving runs that get us up the pitch and overload the opposition’s midfield m. He showed some slick passing last night as well. He’s been badly missed.

Speaking of badly missed, Thiago (McMOTM) put on an absolute midfield masterclass, literally from the first minute. He’s on another planet altogether from any of our other midfielders, his vision and range of passing are out of this world and he changes the dynamic of the entire team. I can’t help but feel any success we may have this season rests in keeping him fit.

Jota was another welcome return. Jota is often accused of not being particularly involved in the play at times but he’s such an intelligent player, his movement and runs are excellent, constantly moving a defence around and he showed great composure for his assist.

Great to see Salah back amongst the goals and looking a bit more like his old self and a shout out to Kostas who had an excellent game as well.

The same old defensive problems persist down our right flank and I think it’s becoming apparent just how much defensive work Hendo puts in on that side. We get nowhere near the same output from Harvey and it’s really shown in recent weeks.

A hard fought victory in the end then but it could have been more comfortable, with Virgil missing a couple of good headed opportunities from corners but we got there in the end. As pleasing as the result was the performance. Sure we weren’t quite at our unstoppable best but we actually looked like us for the first time this season.

With an unexpected break now until we play Brighton in October, it was imperative that we got our CL campaign up and running with a win before back to back games against Rangers, who we should really have too much for. Assuming we win both legs of that then 9 points from 4 games puts in a great position to qualify for the knockout stages. Anyway at least we don’t have to stew on another poor result for a couple of weeks.

A good night’s work all in then and a good confidence builder for the lads. A couple weeks on the training pitch now, further integrating Nunez and all should be rosy soon, ready to give Brighton a spanking in our next game. Until then, walk on!