LVG's substitutions & general tactics are, once again, a large talking point after playing multiple players out of position (including Young up front for the first time) which led to an incredibly impotent attacking display. 1 shot on target due to Martial's moment of brilliance (although he should have scored after doing the hard part of getting there) but other than that we had nil threat. Lingard, Mata and Young did literally nothing during the game offensively (although Mata did very well tracking back a lot in the first half due to Fosu-Mensah's...exuberance.)

Personally I thought we defended well for a large portion of the game - until that collapse around 70 minutes I thought it was going to be a tight 0-0 or 1-0 to either side finish. Unfortunately it'd seem a large share of that defending was down to Fosu-Mensah which is both a positive and a negative. The idea that our defence collapses without an 18 year old (although what an 18 year old!) terrifies me

I found the criticism of Darmian incredibly over the top. Sure the goals came from that side of the pitch but none of them could directly be put onto just his shoulders (as opposed to say Smalling/Blind's fuck-up which left the entire pitch open behind them for the first goal, or Rojo ignoring his man completely and letting Alderweireld have a free header for the second goal) but the idea that because all 3 goals come from his side, he is automatically to blame is ludicrous. Use a link I supplied above to watch the game (about 68 mins onwards) and watch the few minutes leading up to the goal and then tell me if you seriously want to pin it all on Darmian?

Which brings me onto my next thought. Rojo. I've held back on this because this subreddit loves him but I cannot, for the life of me, see what he brings to the table. Other than the match against City earlier this season when he negated De Bruyne, for me he has done nothing. He doesn't have pace, can't cross the ball, seems to be out of position a lot, seems to give away free-kicks a lot and doesn't look comfortable on the ball. I don't get it but do feel free to tell me I'm wrong :)

6 games left for us now in the league - 5th place looks the most likely (provided we don't throw it away to West Ham) which is obviously not good enough but provided we finish above Liverpool (now that their fans have decided they have the best squad in the league because they've won a few games) I'll take it at this point of the season.