I've often written that I'd take a 1-0 every week and not care about the performance and if feels as if that was exactly what I got last night. And there is no but. Three points is three points and I'd take last night every week.
Ultimately the job of the manager is get get three points and everything else is secondary. It feels strange to write, but I was very happy about last night.
And winning, much like losing, can become a habit. We have to win matches like last night before expecting to see bigger results or more commanding performances. Players need to trust each other and have a degree of confidence in what they are doing.
For me (right now), it's about having a foundation, something to build on. And it doesn't happen overnight. But if we can always default to last night, or even the performance from the Manchester City game, then we will know what we can achieve.
And while it is a team game, it is eleven individuals that like I wrote above, need to be able to trust the other players around them. I think, or maybe this is more hope, that we are starting to see that.
And I'm not going to name individual players, but last night there appeared to be more desire to put in a shift and that is nice to see. I am a little worried about 4-3-3 instead of 4-2-3-1 but they are essentially very similar and we do have depth and I'm fairly sure that that depth is a hard thing to manage and it might cause more problems than necessary.
But that is something else. For now, it's about having a weekend where we've won. We have to be happy with that.