There's also the argument that Carrick is needed as a playmaker in midfield and not in defence. I hope van Gaal is aware of this now. We wasted an entire half of football playing ten to twenty meters further down the pitch than needed had blackett started this game in place of Fletcher.

This directly hurt our creativity in the final third seeing as to reach a specific target there would always need to be two passes where one should have been sufficent, or a 30 meter homing missile where a defence splitting through ball or quick combination play should be the prefered moves when dealing with tightly knit defenders. Mata suffered the most in this instance as the ball would never reach him, he found himself in good positions high up the pitch when the ball was being aimlessly shuffled in midfield and defence, making his contributions amount to nought. We saw Mata drop deep a lot when he first arrived at Man Utd having to pick the ball up in midfield with his back against the opposition goal making simple backpasses that were'nt contributing to the attacking play, yesterday it seemed as he had been told to stay up the pitch and wait to be fed from midfield, which is a good thing when you have an intelligent playmaker sitting in midfield. However this was not the case in the first half, and i think Fletcher suffered more than he had to because of this as well. I do not deem Fletcher to be good enough for Man Utd and I think he will be sold sooner rather than later, but he would have benefited from having some sort of security directly behind him letting him feed balls to Carrick and being a cog for passing in front of the Villa defence as part of a three in midfield sort of like Fellaini. Too much pressure was put on him yesterday to be a quick pass-and-move type of midfielder, which he is not.

We missed Herrera bad for this game. He could've potentially pushed our line higher in the first half, released players in behind at the right moments, link up with Mata or provide the movement to displace Villa defenders, we see a mobile Willian do that kind of movement for Chelsea and it works wonders when they have Ivanovic on the overlap. I also wrote pre-match on how he would be quick enough in his pressing to break up counter attacking play and I spotted a couple of instances yesterday where Fletcher struggled to keep up with and put pressure on Villa midfielders, to no surprise really.

Strenght vs. Creativity, strenght AND creativity rather. Would you say Chelsea is a weak team? I would not. Would you say they are not creative? I would not. Same goes for Real Madrid, same goes for Bayern Munich, PSG and to some extent Barcelona. It is always a question of balance in the team, and who you are facing. There is a difference from Swansea to Aston Villa. Against Swansea you want Fellaini in your team, he can win the ball in midfield and break up play, boss playmakers off the ball and put us on the counter, be a defensive security against a high pressing and passing side. Against Aston Villa who sit back and defend you want Herrera who can create space and be secure in keeping possession and be quick enough to prevent counter attacks by blocking passing lanes high up the pitch if he were to miss a pass (which is how Barcelona counter opposition attacking moves). The difference from Man Utd to say Bayern Munich is there is no Schweinsteiger who can do both, or Toni Kroos in Real Madrid who can do both, or Busquets who can do both. I do firmly believe that Herrera will elevate his defensive play under van Gaal and playing in the Premier League, but I still would want a player like Strootman sitting behind or beside him who can do both attacking and defending. Something like the pairing of Carrick and Scholes.

Mata, Falcao, van Persie, di Maria, Rooney these are our options in the final third, if you can not get them to score goals, or be creative, the problem is most likely behind them, as it was yesterday.

Each part of the team enables the next.

But not to worry, injuries and illness will not hamper us forever. Balance will be restored, and Aston Villa will loose at Villa park yet again.