Premier League 2018/19: 5 things we learned from day 1
The 22nd Season of the Premier League got off to an explosive start as Manchester United beat Leicester City 2-1 in a thrilling game on Friday night at Old Trafford.
Manchester United took the lead thanks to a third-minute penalty from World Cup winner, Paul Pogba, and then extended it in the 83rd minute through Luke Shaw. Leicester got one back in injury time after Jamie Vardy pounced on a ball from Ricardo Pereira.
Despite the rumours of a fallout, Jose Mourinho named Pogba as his captain for the first game of the season. World Cup semi-finalist Romelu Lukaku started on the bench for United. Another World Cup semi-finalist, Jamie Vardy was on the substitute bench for Leicester.
United was awarded a penalty in the third-minute as Daniel Amartey handled the ball in the box. Pogba made no mistake from the spot as he opened the scoring. Leicester slowly grew into the game but couldn’t find the net thanks to two brilliant save from De Gea either side of halftime. He miraculously stopped James Madison’s shot in the first half and pulled off another save in the second half to deny Demarai Gray.
Then in the 83rd minute, Shaw’s persistence saw him scoring from a fortuitous bouncing ball to put United up 2-0. Later in the game, Jamie Vardy’s awareness, and position helped him opening his account for the season.
Here are the five things that we learned from the matchday 1 of the Premier League:
#1 Manchester United’s Pre-season problems
Most of the last few weeks have been spent with Mourinho mourning about how the owners were not backing him in the transfer market. United's manager was desperate to sign a central defender and had sights on a host of players including Leicester City’s Harry Maguire. In the end, they signed nobody and were forced to start this game with Bailly and Lindelöf.
United seemed to have put all those worries behind them as they took the lead in the third minute. However, Leicester slowly grew into the match and started controlling it.
In the end, Mourinho showed to the world that he knows how to win a game despite not controlling a match from start to finish.
It wasn’t an excellent performance, but in the end United delivered. An opening day victory against a top half club will boost their confidence a lot.
They will only get better from here especially once Lukaku, Young, and Matic comes back.