Ralf Rangnick has admitted he was pleased with the majority of the individual displays in the dogged 1-0 victory at Norwich City.
The Reds triumphed with Cristiano Ronaldo's second-half penalty, awarded after he was fouled by Max Aarons inside the box.
Although we were far from our fluent best, it is perhaps worth noting that, at this busy time of the season, the results sometimes take precedence over the performance, and that Manchester City, Chelsea and Liverpool also required spot-kicks to win their respective matches against Wolves, Leeds United and Aston Villa respectively.
The boss felt the defensive aspects of our play, in keeping a clean sheet, were satisfying but we lacked a little going forward in difficult conditions against aggressive opponents.
“It was a completely different game than last Sunday [against Crystal Palace],”
he said. “Norwich put in a courageous performance, very proactive, and aggressive way in that they played like we played against Palace.
”It's still a question of how we deal with the kind of football the other team plays. In parts of the game, we have a problem with this kind of football.
“I wish we had more physicality, willingness to win one-on-one duels and we could have done better in certain parts of games.
“But the whole defensive line, the two no.6s, including David De Gea, did extremely well. Fred and Scott McTominay played a high level. The centre-backs and two full-backs were good. Offensively, we had some nice moves but didn't always find the best possible solution in the first half.
”The body language, the intensity, especially in our offensive department, the two striker and also the two number 10s, they didn’t play at the same intensity level as we did against Crystal Palace but again, that also has to do with the way that Norwich played.“
Next up for the Reds is a first-ever trip to Brentford's Community Stadium on Tuesday night.