Wrong Tactics

Cheesy

I've never been one for playing the blame game after a bad result but our tactics were all wrong tonight. We shouldn't have gone 4-5-1 and we shouldn't have gone out so defensive from the start like we appeared to do so.

ArmchairCritic

Can't win, the 6-1 was in his mind. If we lost with a 4-4-2 then SAF would be blamed for being too attacking. Need to refresh our midfield ASAP. There was nothing to suggest when Welbeck came on that playing a more offensive formation would have made a difference. I do agree we should have attacked more in hindsight as they looked quite nervous but the players didn't perform tonight.

Cina

We should've gone 4-5-1, it's what we usually do in those games, and it works.

Problem is that our midfield is quite frankly, rubbish.

Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber

we need a midfield

WR

We don't have the personnel to compete against City - simple as that. Tactics made sweet fuck all difference although I was disappointed not to see Valencia start.

Cantona07

We were very negative today. Obly 3 shots on goal. Wrong metality, no hunger, no desire.

vuc

I don't know why he left it so late to throw Valencia on, let alone start him.

Orton

This

Theon

People on here are obsessed with 4-5-1 but we play far better football in a 4-4-2 and it gets the best out of our best player. Rooney was isolated tonight, in the first half only Park was round him most of the time.

Dropping Welbeck cant be justified when he's in great form. 4-4-2 would have been better, we didn't have a shot on target for fuck sake.

ArmchairCritic

I don't think it was a problem, men behind the ball and hit on the counter has served us really well in big games in previous years but the players just weren't good enough on the night.

Cantona07

That was the biggest disappointment for me too

Cheesy

I wouldn't even say it was going 4-5-1 that was the problem; it was the way we played it. You can go 4-5-1 and try to properly hit them on the counter, but with starting someone like Giggs you just couldn't do that. That's why we should have went with Valencia from the start. In the end, we weren't being wise playing a counter attacking 4-5-1: we were just being defensive. 3 shots and 0 on target tell a story, and it's not a good story at that. Our tactics made us look like we were playing for a draw.

Sam

Fergie's had a poor season in regard to tactics, selection and substitutions.

He;s got it wrong countless times. Sorry, but he has.

Beachryan

Been saying it all season long, said it when the lineups were released and got fully lambasted on the match day forum.

Fergie has been a master of getting a lot out of an injured, limited squad.

But he has been shown up on a dozen occasions this season with his selection and tactics. And to be honest, about half of those have involved starting Ryan Giggs and Park Ji Sung together. Surely someone at the club should have the balls to say look Sir Alex, I know Parky and Giggsy were good a year ago, but they really haven' shown anything this season to merit a place in the starting XI?

5 shots in a game we had to win. Pathetic.

Garethw

We don't have the personnel to successfully play a 4-5-1 or 4-3-3. Rooney is far to isolated.

Cantona07

True. With the players we have, our counter attack like previous ManU teams no where near as good.

Carl

451 wasn't the problem. You can still attack with that system. To suggest otherwise is complete rubbish. The problem was the players. They simply were not good enough. End of.

Rado_N

I don't understand playing Park.
I don't understand not playing Valencia.
I don't understand taking Scholes off.
I don't understand taking Nani off.
I don't understand leaving Giggs on.

Theon

I think 4-4-2 would have been better, but I agree with the rest.

If you want to play on the counter then get some pace on the left flank, I mean how are we going to counter with Giggs playing as kind of winger/centre mid hybrid. The only threat for a counter was Nani on the right or Rooney hopefully holding it up.

If the idea was to play on the counter then we didn't do that in the slightest. Nani should have played on the left and Valencia on the right, get some proper pace on both flanks so we could counter attack properly.

Heardy

Not a single shot on target! Poor all round tonight!

Cheesy

I think a large part of why Rooney was so ineffective tonight was because he was up front as a lone striker. He thrives as a second striker who is allowed to drop deep and become more involved in the game. I've said it time and time again that you take a large part of our team away when you move him up front on his own. He can still score, but the invaluable overall impact he has on the team is reduced massively.

Raoul

3 attempts all game - 0 on target.

Heardy

Nani was atrocious tonight!

Cheesy

I said that myself earlier on. We could have played a counter attacking 4-5-1, but it just wasn't going to work when someone like Giggs was out on the wing. In the end, it just looked defensive as opposed to a dangerous counter attacking team.

Cina

He was still more capable of doing something than a tired old 38 year old who had barely even got a touch of the ball.

Snow

Tactics weren't poor. Even though we changed them and brought on new players nothing changed for us.

We needed some balance. We didn't have a proper left winger so little attack going on there. We had Jones at right back so no help for Nani there. No edge in the team because of that. I'm sure it would have been a better game for us with Rafael in the game. Only thing that Jones is better than Rafael at as a full back is defending set pieces and that's purely because of height difference and it matters so little overall.

Jones' first touch vs Rafael. When you see Rafael with the ball he'll probably deliver it to the right winger or if that isn't an option he'll find Scholes or Carrick. Jones mostly passes back. And he's an awfully poor crosser. With the team set up like it was, playing Giggs and Park, Rafael really should have been starting. After we went under you can't really sacrifice a sub to change that position.

gooDevil

I think the problem is not that we chose 433 but that we've played so little of it, and are missing the two midfielders best suited to it besides Scholes. I don't think you can expect a team to be great in a 433 unless you play it more than 4 times a year.

We lived by Rooney and Welbeck, it would have been nice to die by it too.

gaffs

We played for the draw. Always a dangerous game.

Carl

Has Park EVER had a good game for us as a central midfield player?

I'd love to see our record when both Scholes AND Giggs have started together over the last 2 seasons.

Raoul

3 shots all night - 0 on target.

We played to contain them, not to win. That was a mistake.

AttackingFlair

The problem is personnel not tactics. If we had played 442, people would be moaning saying that we should have played 451.

Rado_N

That

Fletcher's Jilted Lover

Of course they weren't good enough. You can't just throw random players into a formation and expect them to perform. Jones came in at right back with a lack of games. Park came out from the wilderness and played. Giggs came in when hes been atrocious. Rooney left up top with no support. It was a disjointed line up and we got a disjointed performance.

Cheesy

Not many, and he certainly has more poor ones than good ones. People were arguing for him because he often delivers in big games, but that's when he's out on the wing. In the centre, he never really seems to deliver for us.

ArmchairCritic

We didn't play for the draw, we played a cautious game placing importance on defence first but our counter attacking was shoddy. We've played this way many a time before and it's worked. If Smalling didn't switch it may have worked again.

Amir

When I look at Fergie's errors, I've got no issues with his his team selection today at all. It's his dealings last summer, and the summer before that, and any recent transfer window. United have got ONE midfield player on top of his game, Michael Carrick. Alongside him we've got the ill and the injured and the ageing.

We can't use 4-4-2 with two midfielders in their prime, we haven't got two. We get away with it a lot. Scholes being so good even at his age certainly helped, but even he is more restricted than in the past. He's not in his prime. But against top sides we always have issues in midfield, quite often being overran. It hasn't happened a lot this season because between our early exit from Europe and the lack of quality at the top of the PL - we haven't met may top sides. But we couldn't go to City with 4-4-2, we had to put on an extra midfield player just to hold on, and we we didn't have great options. Park was as good as any. He did an OK tactical job, but he's obviously has his limitations and the team suffers for it because for the extra man in midfield we pay with having one less true attacking player.

If we haven't given away such a bad goal, we could have been sitting here quite happy with the score at least. To be fair, even when we went 4-4-2, we weren't particularly good and didn't create anything.

It's not so much the tactics or the team selection, though I think Fergie gives too much credit to experience (no idea why we get such a great selection of wingers and still start Giggs in the big games). It's the transfer dealings. We gambled on Anderson and Cleverley and Fletcher and maybe thought about the future of Pogba and Morrison. The result is our midfield is still our major weakness. And until we get that right, the rest of the team selection will always mirror that.

Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber

The center midfield was the problem. Too one paced to trouble city. Even despite having plenty of the ball.

Ash_G

Yeah I think maybe not a proper 442 but a 4411 with Rooney dropping pretty deep when we were under pressure was the way out. I've said before but I just can't understand what Park offers us that can't be filled by other players now. In the past he was extremely useful because we needed to balance out Ronaldo who we knew wouldn't do anything, or when Nani was a bit more unreliable and we didn't have the options of Valencia/Young, but now we do, there's no reason for him to really start because each of them are hard workers and infinitely better attackingly. But more then that if he is going to play then don't put him in the middle of the pitch. I just can't understand it. It's exactly the same as when Jones plays there, yes they'll run around, but none of them are good/smart enough on the ball and because they're literally in the middle of all our moves they'll inevitably play a key role in a counter/attack and mess it up.

Rooney could have played that role and offered so much more. Welbeck with his enthusiasm, athleticism and ability would have stretched them, giving Rooney and Scholes space to work with. I mean I can understand going 433 but not with like that.

CLK_FPC

I think we should have gone 442 and with Welbeck. Trying to match City with lesser players was always going to blow up in our faces

ArmchairCritic

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, we needed to freshen up the side and Park is not only a big game player but he's very fresh.