I’m delighted with how we played, but not over-excited as, come May, Brentford at home may well prove to be one of the easiest games every team plays. Given Sunderland spent big and had a good first day, Brentford are in my early season relegation predictions.
Still.. the passes for goals 2 and 3 are the two best things I saw across all the games so far and we know that MGW and Anderson can do that against anyone. If we also met the real Sangarre then that is an incredibly good midfield, very well supplemented by Murillo and the full-backs. It’s an awful lot to try and play against.
Murillo being comfortable stepping forward and being an alternative No6 really is powerful for us. It’s not just the runs and the cross-field ball striking.. just doing the simple things a class or two better than the vast majority of defenders helps us a lot, and really gives Anderson, and by extension MGW, more freedom to be where they want to be. I think we’re very lucky that none of the insane money the big nobs were spaffing this summer was aimed at him. He’d be a bigger loss than Elanga.