One player that played a great game today was Akanji. Neutralized most of Zenits attacking attempts and even had 126 touches in the game.
Yes Reyna should have been taken off much earlier, but Favre seems to have fallen out with established players and is using the "I am developing kids trick." Dahoud even when not passing forward still passes the ball much quicker. However, he can't take as much risk as he would like because the manager will drop him for passing forward to much. As for Witsel he was still terrible in possession, but he did a good job covering defensively and won most of his tackles. We need to play a similar style, but they take more risk. Favre still does not get that when you have higher quality the more chances in a game the more th odds are in your favour. The longer things stay 0-0 it favours the weaker team because they get courage and believe they can win. 0-0 is an excellent result for Zenith but a terrible one for us. It's a win and we should top this group with ease and get some money for wins. I think the Nagelsmann move to Dortmund is making progress.
Yes but he also made sloppy passes that could have cost us. Over all we controlled their counter attack. So much for Hummels being unable to play in a back 4.
Also I need to stress that Dahoud and especially Brandt, apart from being creative just move the ball quickly. Really it's especially Brandt, he zips the ball around moving players left and right, creating space. As for using the outside, why didn't Favre have Raphael cross the ball more? Haaland is great at getting on the end of any cross and Reus is not bad. Raphael has an excellent cross. He is just making excuses and his time is almost up.
Although the defenders put in a strong performance, the caveat is that Zenit were missing two of their more dynamic attackers in Azmoun and Malcom, so Hummels and Akanji pretty much just had Dzyuba to contend with. Also the counterpressing up front was generally pretty good, making the back line's job a bit easier. Favre needs to install solutions to the problem he pointed out to avoid situations like today where everyone is bunching up and trying to 1-2 their way through the middle. You have like 4 players who like to play like #10s, it'd help to impose some structure or prepared combinations against the block. On the bright side, Meunier and Witsel recovered well after their terrible games last week and seemed to address some of their negative areas.
We can solve the issue quite simply by playing Brandt instead of Reyna, Brandt usually drops deeper. Encouraging more players to shoot at sight rather than waiting for the perfect opportunity like Favre wants. Telling Raphael to whip the cross in more often when the box is packed.