Just back from the game. The result and performance were quite disappointing, but not worse than that, and understandable in the context. Firstly we did enough to win, even though we lacked creativity. But if you consider that last season our key players for attacking creativity and threat were Eze, Sarr, Wharton and Mateta, it is unsurprising that we did not find it easy to carve out clear opportunities. In my view Pino showed a lot of promise, but it's early days to expect him to fully compensate for those who are missing. He is incredibly quick-thinking both in picking the right pass immediately or by a trick which takes him away from an opponent. On the down-side he looks quite lightweight for the EPL, and a few of his passes were poorly executed, but still very promising. Uche looked lively and made an impact in his brief appearance. As usual we were extremely solid in defence, with some great blocks, and Richards was king of the air. I thought Kamada had quite a good game. Lerma's passing was the stuff of nightmares, and next to him Hughes looked fine in the first half but I thought he was quite poor in the 2nd. JP was terrible today, just unable to hold the ball at all. So we were missing a couple of really key players, and are waiting for our new signings to bed in. No need for major criticism, but it was not a performance which will live long in the memory.
England
USA
