I think everyone, especially commentators, get way to stuck on positions rather than roles. I had a little giggle in the match thread when someone claimed Lingard doesn't have the passing ability to be a 10 at United... well obviously, that's not why he's playing centrally. For one, apart from Mata's run earlier this year United have rarely ever used an actual playmaking #10. Lingard's there to press and win the ball high up the park, which he did do quite well today. Alli plays a similar role for Spurs, win the ball in the forward half, find pockets of space, get in behind. I think Lingard's effort was just let down by how poor our passing was between the front three all game, just lazy really, a lot of indecision and no real flow going forward.

Mata, well I suppose the idea was to drag Rose inside where he is quite uncomfortable and get TFM around the outside because Erikson doesn't cover. Happened once early I think but other than that Mata was really ineffectual and there should have been a change at half time. I think Young comes on up front one because Martial was getting some reward out of Walker (which paid off when he should have put us ahead and probably avoided the collapse), two because Martial (and Rashford) is not getting that kind of space to run at players in the middle, so he's just put Young there to play with his back to goal. Really hope Rooney's ready I think we've been asking too much of Rashford, Young not suited to that role and Martial has the unavoidable x-factor coming in from the left.

Game was lost when you can only create a rare chance and then miss, and just incompetent defending for 5 minutes where they were completely asleep. I don't know how you combat that on the team sheet, even Townsend was complimenting how well set up we were, then it just falls apart. Darmian comes on for TFM who wasn't great in the first place. First one he's asleep and lets Eriksen waltz in behind, then gives away a foul getting second to the ball and the third he has to block the cross, where he's let the ball go across just made it too easy for them.