West Brom 2-2 Manchester United: Match Analysis

As a Villa fan, you can imagine I was a Man United fan tonight but in all honesty, West Brom did exactly what they needed to do to come away with at least a point and that was to play like the away team in times of pressure. I'm familiar with this style of fast counter attacking play as it's what Villa do at home pretty much most games against the bigger clubs. West Brom's second goal was a prime example of this where United had been playing good possession football for the whole second half until the ball was intercepted by Brunt who slotted a lovely ball through to Berahino who capitalised on the poor positional play of Rafael and managed to get through 1 on 1 with De Gea and keep his composure to slot it in the bottom right.

Before this though, the first half was a complete write off in my opinion for the Man Utd team where Luke Shaw was having a fairly poor game, giving the ball away a lot and the cause of Baggies first goal through him being drawn towards the ball in the centre of the pitch to allow Wisdom to run into the hole he left behind him and slot it to Sessegnon who finished it emphatically. Another player who was below par in my opinion was Ander Herrera, who was really frustrating me at some points of the half with his constant mistakes and poor decisions in game and not surprisingly when he was taken off at half time and United looked like a completely different side.

Sessegnon celebrates after putting West Brom 1-0 up

But it wasn't just the Man Utd errors which allowed West Brom to get a point, I was thoroughly impressed with some individual performances for them mainly at the back in the shape of Craig Dawson who I though was immense for them in keeping their defensive shape and pulling off some great defensive headers and clearances. Another performance I was impressed with was Chris Brunt. He was very attack minded and played some penetrative balls through which also led to one of the goals. I also can't leave out the prolific Saido Berahino, who was fairly quiet tonight but if it wasn't for his goal tonight and his 6 league goals then West Brom would be sitting 18th in the table.

This game has showed me that I shouldn't have written off West Brom at the start of the season as guaranteed relegation candidates, as from today's performance I feel that they look like they could stay in the league comfortably this season and as for Man Utd, well unless they get their defensive frailties sorted, then i can't see them even attaining Europa League football let alone Champions League.