Matteo Darmian

looked solid at rb once big Tone came on - still think Darmian will be the regular. Just needed Tone's speed and strength for this one.

Originally Posted by Denis Irwell

looked solid at rb once big Tone came on - still think Darmian will be the regular. Just needed Tone's speed and strength for this one.

Agreed - Mane's acceleration from a standing start is frightening. He'd have troubled anyone today.

Originally Posted by Grimson

Agreed - Mane's acceleration from a standing start is frightening. He'd have troubled anyone today.

didn't mane start on the right/centre today? I think most of the time it was tadic against darmian. Tadic had a field day against darmian and he isn't rapid.

Think darmian badly needed a rest. In fact lot of the squad has already played a lot of games in short space of time. Depay almost always looks £#%&!ed in the last 15 mins.

Most of the squad need rest badly and I think ipswich game has come at the right time. Hope depay, martial all get a rest.

Rojo will be fine at lb once he gets back up to speed. Looked decent going forward too. Probably to his benefit that he got some extra time off after the copa tbh. Sanchez looks like a shadow of himself last year.

yep - a break from midweek wouldn't do any harm for some of them. Big fella like Rojo probably needs a bit more game time to sharpen up but not far off. Don't know what Rooney's excuse is though. Apart from his general play, there was an illustration of his state of mind around the centre circle, with Soton in possession; their player was 3 or 4 yards away from Rooney and rather than press the guy, he stood there watching with no intention of movement or a challenge - I think it was Schneidy, who came from well behind Rooney and did his job for him. Almost felt embarrassed for him.

Makeweight for Stones?

We had nowt down that side and we looked unbalanced so it made sense to bring Valencia on to push Tadic back.