Mata: Display Deserved A Better Result

Each and every Monday during the season, Manchester United star Juan Mata pens a personal blog in which he reflects on the past week. In this 31 October post, he discusses the remarkable draw with Burnley at Old Trafford where the Reds did everything but score the crucial goal...

Hi everyone,

I’m writing to you at the end of a typical autumn Sunday in Manchester, with the night arriving earlier after the clocks have gone back by an hour. The winter season is approaching...

The day has been quiet and I’ve been thinking a lot about Saturday’s game, arguably one of the weirdest draws of my career. If you watched our game against Burnley, you will agree with me that it’s very difficult to create so many chances to win and yet get only one point. I guess Heaton, their goalkeeper, will remember this evening of October for all his life, and you can do nothing but congratulate him. He saved absolutely everything.

The team showed a good attitude from the kick-off. We started very focused and kept fighting for the goal until the final whistle, despite the fact we had to play with ten men for quite a while. We had countless shots on target, but between the woodwork, the defenders and, especially, the goalkeeper’s outstanding performance, the goal never came. I know it sounds repetitive but this sport is like that. There are games when the score is cruel and it doesn’t reflect how well you did. Sometimes you don’t deserve to win but you end up with three points, and sometimes is the opposite.

I honestly think that our performance on Saturday reinforces the idea of a team that we want to show in the long term, more than if it had been a lucky win after a bad game. If we had taken a couple of the chances that we had, now we would be talking about one of our best games of the season, so we shouldn’t see this from an extremely negative perspective when we did so many things well. However, we are aware that we must get better in that area.

As always, thank you for showing your support after the game, it means that you perceived the effort made by the team. Have a nice week.

‎Hugs, Juan.

Credit: Manutd.com