Good to see some new faces in the starting line up tonight including Henderson, Telles, Matic, Martial and most importantly Van De Beek. Man United started off the match generally well playing a higher defensive line and creating chances. West Ham momentarily dropped down to 10 men after Angelo Ogbonna came off injured due to a clash with Martial. Man United constantly looked like the first team to score throughout the first half and nearly did when a corner found the head of Lindelof but was denied by a finger tip save by Fabianski. Towards the end of the first half following West Hams first corner, both physios were called to the pitch after a clash of heads between Martial and Diop. As an uneventful first half comes to a close we find ourselves missing that spark that comes with Bruno Fernandes and Paul Pogba.
The second half starts with no changes to the starting eleven. The first chance fell to Marcus Rashford who was denied by another great save by Fabianski. West Ham have moved away from their extremely defensive first half and are playing more expansive football. The second half remained largely uneventful. The last 15 minutes saw the introduction of Bruno Fernandes for Van De Beek and Scott McTominay for Matic. With 5 minutes to go we then saw the introduction of Edison Cavani who came on to replace Greenwood.
The start of extra time saw both full backs replaced with the introduction of Luke Shaw and Brandon Williams. 7 minutes into extra time the deadlock was finally broken when a neat pass from Rashford inside the box found the path of McTominay who put his name on the score sheet yet again. The official man of the match was given to Harry Maguire who, although, didn’t have too much to do but done what he needed to do well. In my opinion Alex Telles stood out as putting in a good performance. More disappointingly was Van De Beek’s display in the number 10 role who looked largely unconfident compared to Bruno. Hopefully this is down to lack of playing time and will improve with a run of games.
