Ruben Amorim became only the third manager in United's history to win his first two European games although he hardly faced the best of the best. The other two managers to achieve this? Sir Matt Busby and Sir Alex Ferguson.
Esteemed company for the Portuguese.
However, despite the win which pretty much puts one foot into the round of 16 for United, Amorim looked very unhappy with what he saw from his team on the field.
He talks about how he wants his side to play good football but that was anything but. With a derby on the horizon, the MUFC boss will want to see improvements. And fast.
1. Substitutions made a difference
This was the only positive of the game and the point where we actually started to look like a team.
In the past two matches, the substitutions actually made us worse. Last night though, the alterations did what they were supposed to do and improved the team.
I don't think that Amorim actually wanted to use some of those bench options with an eye on the derby but his hand was forced due to the shiteness of the first half.
All of Hojlund, Antony and Mount made a massive difference to the overall performance of the team as not only were they good individually, they actually helped improve others such as Amad and Bruno. The two of them in particular looked better once the changes were made.
Hojlund of course was the biggest difference with his brace and man of the match performance.
Those who came on appeared to have a better understanding of the system and had an overall better attitude than those they replaced with Zirkzee and Rashford the two worst players on the field.
Isn't it incredible what the right attitude can do.
2. Can't take good set pieces
We know that when it comes to defending them, we're shite but it seems that when it comes to taking them, we're shite too.
Amad was even given the responsibility on a couple of occasions to take corners. He was somehow worse than Bruno! At least with the skipper's, he gets it off the ground even though it doesn't beat the first man. Amad's looked to be going along the ground it was so poor.
If we do somehow manage to beat the first man (which is very rare), the delivery still doesn't cause much problems for the opposition. Most teams deal with it easily.
Standard crosses into the box is a problem as well. We don't know how to put in a good ball into the box regardless of whether it's a corner, free-kick or cross from open play. There was only one good ball which was flashed across goal by Bruno from the left to which Hojlund should've done better.
What I will say though is that there seems to be an improvement with some of our free-kicks.
At Arsenal, we saw something a little different. Instead of just shooting at goal from a decent distance and angle, the captain instead played a ball to Antony who ran off to the side of the wall which confused everyone. Unfortunately, the Brazilian couldn't make the most of that opportunity.
A similar thing happened in this game where Bruno took a quick free-kick into Hojlund who unlike Antony, did put the ball in the back of the net. Most probably thought Bruno would put it into the box.
Rashford's goal against Everton was also something different from a corner where Bruno again, played the ball to the edge of the box before Rashford hit it on the half-volley to put United in the lead.
Perhaps this out of the box (see what I did there?) thinking is the way to go when it comes to set pieces for United.
Nonetheless, we need to work on our set pieces and deliveries in both boxes.
3. Given everyone a chance
At this point, Ruben Amorim has used all the players available to him since his arrival and all of them have had enough time on the field to showcase whether or not they're good enough to play for him and this club.
But tbh, there aren't many who have put their hands up to suggest that they are worthy of wearing the famous red shirt. There have been far too many average to poor performances from the players that you would be expecting a lot more from.
When looking at the starting XI, there were some first team regulars but also those we would consider bench options like Casemiro, Zirkzee and Rashford. Considering you are not in the first team, surely you would want to go out there and prove why Amorim should pick you ahead of others.
If anything, they made it easier for him to know who he can actually select as there is no 'selection headache' as they say, when it comes to certain positions.
Some players have taken their chances while others have not. The problem is, is that as it is only a select group of players that the manager can truly rely on, they will need to play all the time should he want to get the team playing Amorim ball sooner rather than later as well as win games.
This will cause them to become fatigued and overused to a point where burnout is a possibility.
He cannot rely on the wider squad and will need to move them on. Rotation from this point on will not be a good idea in my opinion.
But does this make it easier for the manager to know his best team though?
4. Too many confidence players
What I mean is that we look to have a lot of players who can only perform when things go well. As soon as things go against them though, they faulter.
Onana is a good example.
Last season was a bit of a nightmare for him particularly in Europe, similarly to last night. For most of this season though, he has arguably been one of our best players and most improved from last year.
And then the Forest game. That performance came out of nowhere.
Yes, anyone can make mistakes but as we know with this goalkeeper, given his recent history with United, I still feel that there isn't complete trust with him. Again, he makes another inexplicable error out of nowhere that puts us in all sorts of unnecessary trouble and straight after the restart, the same as the Forest match.
Two games in a row of poor performances as even his coming for the ball in the box was suspect. He took Casemiro out when trying to claim a ball which he ended up missing. Luckily, that didn't cost us and the midfielder came away unscathed.
But much like Onana, Zirkzee and Rashford look to be affected by not being in the team as often as they'd like which drops their confidence too.
In the last three games, the pair looked very out of sorts when coming on against Arsenal and Forest, and from the start last night. This was also their first starts since the 4-0 win over Everton where they both scored 2 goals.
Amorim has since opted for Hojlund, Garnacho and others in the front three. This would've no doubt caused Zirkzee and Rashford to feel down which is understandable but they still need to show that level of professionalism and quality.
I guess this comes down to attitude and overall drive to do their best regardless of the circumstances.
How much do they want it?
5. Was there improvement to what manager wanted?
No, no there wasn't.
Prior to this match and after the loss to Forest, Ruben Amorim was unhappy at the tempo of his team saying that they needed to move the ball quicker and improve defensively when it came to set pieces.
Those same issues were evident once more.
The decision-making as well, was very poor especially towards the end of the game where United had a few overloads during counter-attacks. But thanks to making the wrong pass and lacking that care with the ball, the chance was gone.
This led to a bit of a spat between Hojlund and Amad after the game which I think is a good thing because it shows they care and is something we need to see more of amongst our players. Amorim too, was happy to see this as he also felt that when you care, you have this type of reaction to one another:
“Very good sign!”.
“We need to feel something... If we need to fight each other, it’s like a family. When you don’t care, you do nothing. When you care, you fight with your brother, father or mother”.
But the manager would've been malcontent with how cheaply his team gave away possession. That lack of care on the ball was diabolical even if the pitch wasn't the best. He also would've no doubt been unhappy with another sloppy error by his goalkeeper which put his side under unnecessary pressure.
That lack of concentration would've also been something that Amorim would not have welcomed as straight after the restart, his side goes and gives the lead to the opposition, much like they did against Forest.
In the final third, we really didn't cause Plzen too many problems to a point where the game was bordering on boredom for that first half. This again, is what we saw against Forest and at Arsenal last week.
There were too many similarities between our last match and this one to a point where there actually wasn't much improvement, at least until the substitutions came on. That would've been the only time Amorim would've been happy with his side.
Background Image: Man Utd beat Viktoria Plzen 2-1 in Czech Republic | Image via Manchester United official X (@ManUtd)