Erik ten Hag's side began his third season at the club with a slightly nervy 1-0 win over Fulham. He will be happy with the result and general performance, but there were areas where he would be a little annoyed.
1. High Press
But let's start with a positive. This high press is something that we haven't seen too often with United over the recent years. The last time we saw the team press like that was for the half hour under Ralf Rangnick 2 years ago!
The difference is that this high press lasted for most of the game. It did end up fading at times especially during the second half but in the main, it was really impressive.
Mason Mount, Bruno Fernandes, Marcus Rashford, Amad, Casemiro and Kobbie Mainoo were all on the arses of the Fulham players whenever they wanted to build up from the back which caused them to cock up on a couple of occasions. These led to United's best opportunities but not taking them was the problem.
However, it is something to truly build upon for the future because we did struggle to create some good goal scoring opportunities.
2. Casemiro
He's a bit confusing at the moment.
As a CDM, he just doesn't seem to have the quality. He gets run past too easily, he doesn't necessarily protect the defence well enough, he looked too slow and on the back foot with his all round defensive work simply not good enough.
As a CAM though, we don't need Bruno Fernandes. That's how good Casemiro was in the final third.
He is always a threat as he wins so many headers; he hit a volley that went over the bar as well as another from range; and as we saw with that pass to Bruno, has an eye for something that most creative midfielders would've been proud of.
So what is he?
We need a number 6 and he is the only one we have so he has to play yet he doesn't do his first job properly. But then he is so brilliant going forward as he is another outlet in attack.
He wasn't terrible defensively as he did make some good tackles and blocks but he was nowhere near good enough as a proper CDM. He needs to sharpen up his defensive abilities just as he has done in his offensive side of the game.
3. Not conceding chances
This was perhaps one of the bigger positives from the game.
Last season, United conceded on average of around 20 shots per match across all competitions. Even in the opener at home to Wolves, MUFC let the opposition have a total of 23 attempts at goal. We were lucky they didn't have their shooting boots on because that should've been a damaging defeat.
Against Fulham though, other than an attempt by Kenny Tete which was from distance and a deflected Rodrigo Muniz shot that required a parry over the bar by Onana, Fulham didn't actually create anything of note.
They threatened for large portions of the match but without really troubling United. Marco Silva's side had 10 shots at goal, less than half what we conceded against Wolves at the start of last season.
Yes, the defensive line was still relatively deep, yes the midfield was exposed at times, but for United to make such a difference in an area that caused us much problems last year, is quite promising.
I thought defensively overall as well, we were quite solid.
4. Value of a proper striker
What a difference having a number 9 makes. And Joshua Zirkzee isn't even an out-and-out striker.
But just having a player in that position who actually knows what he's doing was the key to us getting that goal up front.
Before he came on, United were reliant on mistakes by Fulham to actually have chances of their own. It wasn't because of good football and carving the opponent open that resulted in these opportunities.
Bruno, Mount and later on, Garnacho were all wasteful up front. Erik ten Hag has mentioned quite often throughout pre-season that his side lack a cutting edge in attack. While he was happy with the fact that his players were actually making the chances, failure to take them would've been very frustrating.
I also don't necessarily think that the two false 9's approach truly worked. Mason Mount and captain Fernandes worked pretty well in the high press but it really was two players doing one person's job. They also got in each other's way a couple of times as they were both doing the same thing.
Bringing on a striker (or someone who knows how to play centre-forward) removed this issue of them getting in each other's way. With Bruno also wont to go forward and be in the box combined with Zirkzee's ability to drop into the number 10 role, that created a sort of pivot up front of one goes, one drops off. With Mount and Bruno, I don't think they had that same understanding.
What I liked about Zirkzee's game is in him just laying the ball off and moving. Ample times, the Dutchman - who finally played a game for United despite being at the club for weeks - would just pop the ball off to the nearest team-mate and move forward. Simple stuff that we just didn't see with Mount or Bruno.
Zirkzee is also a big guy which means a target man up front. Without him (or Rasmus Hojlund) we don't have someone big as our striker. When the wingers for example, get the ball, there is no man to aim for.
There were a couple of decent crosses put in in that game but no one anywhere near it. You would expect your striker to be there.
And as we saw with his goal, his timing and positioning is very good, something else that none of the false 9's have.
Like where the bloody hell did Zrikzee come out from?!
He wasn't in the picture at all when Garnacho played that cross and it was such a good finish, I thought McTominay scored it! A typical striker's goal.
With this goal, we also saw two other things I liked: we played the cross in first-time which isn't something we do enough, and we had someone who could actually finish. Out of all the opportunities we had in the game, Zirkzee's goal was the hardest.
He made it look simple.
5. Style of Play
Despite the positivity, was there much of a difference in our style of play though?
Yes, the high press was impressive and is something that we need to continue to do, but beyond that, the defensive line wasn't high a good amount of the time, there was a gap in the midfield a lot, the midfield itself looked slow and sluggish, we still didn't create too many chances and we weren't clinical enough. We also looked most threatening when we broke on Fulham.
We weren't particularly good enough at defending Fulham's corners either.
Every corner of theirs came to the front post. They won the header every time. We did nothing to try and prevent that. We were lucky to get away with it but is something we need to look at.
With the new set-piece coach, this is an area where we seriously need to improve in both boxes as we didn't create any chances in our own.
This is the same as last season.
In saying that though, we didn't hit too many long balls, we weren't too counter-attacking, we didn't concede too many chances and at the very least, we did have more opportunities to score even if it didn't come from conventional means.
I would also add that I'm not too sure what some of the changes were by Erik ten Hag.
This is something that I've (and many) have complained about over his time at the club because when looking at some of his substitutions, it really does raise a few eyebrows.
Taking off Amad for Garnacho was correct, Zirkzee for Mount was right as well. But we were still 0-0 when he took of Noussair Mazraoui and Harry Maguire - who I thought were our two best players - to bring on Matthijs De Ligt and Jonny Evans?!
I wasn't sure how two new central defenders were going to help us go forward and get the goal/s we needed to win.
Not changing the midfielders when it was plain to see that they were tiring made little and less sense as well.
Substitutions are an area of his game where I think Erik ten Hag needs to improve.
Final Thoughts
There were other things to take note of such as the overall fitness of the team. It's not at the level required which is understandable at the start of a season but still needs improving.
I do believe that changes to the starting line-up need to be made for Brighton as certain players would make us better and more able to play how the manager wants.
This quote after the game last night speaks volumes about what ten Hag wants in terms of his playing style:
“When we have our consistent back four, we will defend properly with a high line and the midfield and wingers can get forward. Without a consistent back four, there is no pattern and routines and that's when gaps appear.”
And a big positive, no injuries 🙌.
Let's keep it that way.
But a good, solid performance that we can build upon to start the season is always a good thing.
Background Image: Joshua Zirkzee and Marcus Rashford | Photo by Michael Regan/Getty Images via The Busby Babe