We faced, probably both technically and physically, the strongest team. I'm happy because the guys got into the game and they understood that today there was not only a need for quality but also for physicality, for physical confrontation. There was, especially in the second half.
At the time, not many of Salech's teammates were close to him in terms of goalscoring, and with veteran frontman Callum Robinson as the only natural replacement, who had cultivated himself as a reliable back-up throughout the season, many were wondering who Brian Barry-Murphy would turn to.
"When I came here last season, I understood maybe I don't have the players to play well in that system, but it was the beginning of a process," he said ahead of Tuesday's match against relegation-threatened Wolves at Old Trafford. "We were trying to build an identity. Today is a different moment. We don't have a lot of players, and we need to adapt, sothey understand why we are changing."
"We had our way of playing when we started the season and maybe our opponents were not that familiar [with it]," he said. "Now they start to see how we want to play, how they stop that. Again, we need to evolve our things that can counter what the opponent is doing. "The basics and the foundations of how we do things are at a good level. Now, we need little tweaks - when we attack, how we can be more balanced in defence, attacking the box, how we can find this final pass. "The basics are there, the foundations are there, the principles are there."
when you have more players with different characteristics, especially with Cunha or Ben [Sesko], you have more options to score goals, especially against low blocks where there's no space. But that is just an excuse, we have players on the pitch, and we could lose the game but with a different intensity, the understanding of the moment when the other team fight each other and get the red card. And I think we didn't understand the moments of the game during the 90 minutes.
I'm not going to take any credit from Ousmane! He's a phenomenally talented footballer who's worked incredibly hard to get where he is, Jacobson smiles. Whether it was his idea or the manager's at Paris Saint-Germain to switch him from playing wide to playing in the middle, but the way he's adapted to that, he's thoroughly deserving of the Ballon d'Or and hopefully he'll still have time to play Football Manager!
