Well, look, am I looking at this through blue tinted specs? Maybe, I don't know, but everything I've seen about this weekend I've found highly reassuring. Despite all the hullabaloo about our first goal, we created our dominance, we merited it, against eleven men behind the ball, and we certainly created the other two goals. Under our own steam, through our own skill. We carved out a number of other clear-cut chances that should have been put away. In both halves.
The Liverpool-Burnley game, by contrast. At least three of those goals are absolutely gifted to Liverpool through astoundingly inept defending. I'm not having it any other way. Liverpool did not actually impress me, they huffed and puffed, but it's striking that outside of the goals themselves, Heaton actually had very little to do. He didn't pull off any astonishing saves; yes, he's direly at fault for the second goal (along with his defender), but he couldn't have done much about the other three, because he was left high and dry by truly terrible defending. This was not the case, as far as I saw, as regards our match.
Now, the Arsenal-United match I didn't see. But somehow the prospect of going to Old Trafford doesn't disturb me as much as it did before that match. Pep's trying to take the heat off by saying we will drop points. He's right to do that, of course, it's good management. I still think that 24 April is the key game. But actually I can see no good reason why we cannot win every single game of the eight that are left, especially with some pretty important players coming back from injury. The x factor, of course, is the other two competitions that were in.
In short, all good. Steady as she goes.
