Of course, the scoreline and sequence of scoring was very similar to the last game of last season, but really I think the performance yesterday was very encouraging. I was naturally extremely worried when Aguero went down (not least because I had him as my captain in my fantasy team!), and with knee injuries you fear the worst, but he's apparently played it down on Twitter so hopefully he won't be out for too long.
As for the rest of the match, Tevez looked lean and bright, and it was only wayward finishing that prevented us from taking a considerable lead. Silva's pathetic penalty was frustrating, as you feel that Sergio would have buried it (as would Tevez), but when Tevez put us in front I felt that it would just be a case of how many we'd score. We missed several chances at 1-0, and played some great football - one interchange up the right was a joy to behold.
The major criticism was obviously the failure to make the chances count - Lambert's finish was great, and Davis did well, but when those goals went in we'd had 80% possession in the second half. Even after we'd scored the third goal Southampton were playing tidy football, and had us worried at times, and they look like Swansea's successors as a good footballing side up from the Championship. We showed good character though, and seemed to step up a gear when we needed to, something United and other recent winners of the league have been doing for years, so I'm not too worried with the performance overall. It's perhaps a bit tricky to play a promoted side - they are an unknown quantity to an extent, and have the adrenaline and so on from being back in the Prem (neither Reading nor West Ham lost) - but just like last year, we rode out the difficult parts of the match to come through and win.
My only slight concern is our defending - we conceded the fewest in the league last season, but the goals we've let in this season have been sloppy. Both Chelsea goals in the Community Shield came from poor clearances from our defenders (even before Pantimilon spilt it) which were then recycled and ended up in the net, and yesterday we had a couple of chances to clear the first, and the second came from Rodwell's poor pass (that aside, he actually looked quite assured). Hopefully this will just be early season rustiness, because we can't afford to give goals away - Mancini claims it's because all of the defenders were away with national sides so he's not had chance to work with them.
Overall though, I don't think there's any cause to panic - we still look confident and dangerous going forward, and are developing the knack of winning games from a losing position. Final word on Kompany - there aren't many centre-backs in the division who have the confidence to lash in a left foot shot first time from the edge of the box, and his quick reactions meant Saints didn't have time to regroup before Yaya squirmed it out to Dzeko. Class.
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