Ruben Amorim fires back at Altay Bayindir criticism
Arsenal's winning goal was scored by Riccardo Calafiori in the 13th minute, following a corner where Manchester United goalkeeper Altay Bayindir fumbled the ball under pressure.
United manager Ruben Amorim defended Bayindir, stating that the contact from Arsenal's William Saliba was allowed and his team needs to learn to apply similar pressure.
Amorim rejected criticism of the Turkey international when asked if he had considered starting third-choice Tom Heaton and added he was happy with his three main goalkeepers.
Despite the loss, Amorim praised his team's overall performance, noting they were the better side with 22 shots on goal but could not beat Arsenal's goalkeeper David Raya.
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During his first months at West Ham United, after the medical and the signing and the debut had passed in a blur and he was beginning to settle into his new surroundings, Tomas Soucek became aware that he was missing something when his team-mates talked about the club's Rush Green training ground. His English wasn't great at that point, but it didn't have to be to detect the fizz and jest of playful banter. Eventually he got the message: Rush Green was commonly considered, by Premier League standards, pretty basic. When he found out that they were dissing the training ground, Soucek was genuinely and sincerely amazed. It had never occurred to him that it was anything other than top-notch. At his previous club, Slavia Prague, they used one training pitch all year round, and in the winter it was bumpy and hard to pass on. Here, they had five pitches, beautifully mown and perfectly flat, each one a gorgeous, lucent green. 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Before Chelsea's visit on Friday night, they have taken ten points from their past 12 matches, and he is fighting to convince an under-pressure head coach in Graham Potter that he is worth a place in an underperforming team. In the loss to Sunderland on Saturday he came on after 71 minutes and the game slipped from 1-0 to 3-0. This may be the beginning of the end or just another bump in the road. Regardless, he has earned a moment of appreciation. About 550 players will take to the field in the Premier League this season, but not one of them uses this rectangular canvas quite like Soucek does. He may well be unique in English football. Soucek, you've probably noticed, was not blessed with pace. We can quantify this: with a top speed of 30.2km/h (18.8mph), he was the fifth-slowest player in the entire top flight last season, behind Bernardo Silva, Craig Dawson, Mikel Merino and Casemiro. However, he uses his limited gifts of locomotion in an extraordinary way. According to a fascinating article by Ali Tweedale for the Opta Analyst website, last season Soucek spent a higher percentage of his game time jogging than any other player in the league, and a lower percentage of his game time walking than anyone else (he spent just 54.2 per cent of his time walking, compared with 77.6 per cent for Matheus Cunha, the top outfielder by this metric). As a result, only Dejan Kulusevski covered more ground per 90 minutes than his 12.2km. In other words, in a game increasingly tilted towards explosive, high-intensity bursts, Soucek is a total outlier, cruising around the pitch with the slow, incessant, purposeful motion of a robot lawnmower. And as he moves, he affects the game in an assortment of ways that no one else comes close to emulating. 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an hour ago
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