#2 Both teams sorting themselves out in the first half
In contrast to the beautiful, sunny day at Bournemouth, it was a pretty dull first half at the Vitality Stadium. Both teams were comfortable putting players behind the ball. Manchester United, in particular, didn’t provide too much evidence that they had put Louis van Gaal’s defensive mentality behind them, under the Mourinho era.
They did not create enough to unsettle Bournemouth’s back four, who managed to keep Zlatan Ibrahimovic quiet on his Premier League debut. However, with the season still in its embryonic stage and new acquisitions for both teams, it was expected that both teams would take awhile to understand their new team-mates’ attributes.
Overall, the free-flowing, high press football which is definitive of the Premier League was not entirely visible in the opening exchanges.
