Solid enough vs Chelsea, we started extremely quickly & aggressive. The sending off arguably came as a direct result of that aggressive pressing & directness of that opening 5-10 minutes, having a man extra obviously helped for the 40 or so minutes we had a man advantage.
Sanchez probably would have been better actually pulling out of the challenge as Mbeumo was unlikely to catch the ball ahead of James after he touched it past him, but once he clattered him, it would have needed to be a lenient referee to keep him on the pitch especially in this day & age when it seems like the attacker always gets the benefit when there's a decision to be made.
Casemiro's red was crazy, he made 2 fouls & was booked for both. The first one was fair enough, but the second was crazy harsh to receive a booking for that. He pulls him back, but it's not a petulant or intentional pull back to deny an attack that's an auto yellow card, it's a battling for the ball type of pull back. Foul/not a foul, I could accept either ruling, but it's the booking aspect.. really unnecessary. Casemiro must be laughing to himself, he read for years how physical the PL was & since he's arrived he's had 2 or 3 of the softest red cards I can ever remember.
The biggest sort of negative I have from the game was not going for the throat when we were 2-0 up, getting another & killing the game off. Few occasions we played it back to Maguire who stood almost stationary for 5-10 seconds almost waiting for Chelsea as if they're going to press him when it was clear at that point they were in damage control until half-time just sitting deep.
Had a few opportunities as well to kill the game off though in spite of this but ended up making poor decisions.
Hopefully we can pick up some points in the forthcoming games & get a bit of momentum going.
Allow me to demonstrate.
