Best to write yesterday’s game off as irrelevant

I cant agree that such an appalling performance can should be viewed as irrelevant. This was a Palace side that we knew was dangerous, though not of high quality. We failed to prepare and failed to execute against an inferior side.

Yes, we need to move on, but can we not at least all agree here that we’ve been warned?
 
It is just easier to accept we are a top 6 team and so it is ok to have off games now and then. False expectations of kicking off from last season's position is what is making us to moan our defeats.
 
I'm just calling a spade a spade.
It’s not acceptable but there are enough reasonable mitigating factors to understand why it happened and those factors won’t last for long.

as OGS said it’s a good wake up call, but I’m personally struggling to work out how it could be avoided. I’m one of those who said play the reserves during Europa as it held no practical value. Instead we went for it, ended up worse off for the experience.
 
If Hodgson has the best record against the top 6 away from home in the PL up to when that article was written, how can a poor record be the standard? It defies common sense. The points seem low because most sides come away with few points from those fixtures given they’re the hardest in the league by definition.
The thing is, it's really difficult to compare managers in this way because most clubs generally change their managers on an annual or biannual basis. Hodgson is one of the longest serving current managers in the Premier League. Out off the current managers only Dyche, Klopp and Guardiola have spent more time in the Premier League at their current respective clubs. (I'm not counting Nuno and Wilder here because they've spent some time in the lower divisions).

That article you posted doesn't say that "Hodgson has the best record against the top 6 away from home in the PL". The article references the 2016-17 season, where Roy Hodgson wasn't even managing Crystal Palace, Pardew and Allardyce managed them that season. We have to look at the facts as they are NOW, not as they were a couple of years ago. If you wanna look at managers records against the big sides, you have to count the most recent season too. You can't say "Oh last season doesn't suit my point so let's just write that off as irrelevant".

The fact is since Hodgson took over Crystal Palace he has gathered 12 points in three years. Dyche at Burnley has 11 points in the same period (12 points in four years if we include the season your article references). Nuno has 14 points in two years since Wolves got promoted from the Championship. Again, Palace's record is nothing spectacular. And like I said, managers get sacked so often that it's difficult to get a proper comparison here.

And don't get me wrong, I don't think Hodgson is a bad coach, he's done all right at Palace and they have a couple of solid midtable players in their squad. But I would still expect us to beat them and the likes of Burnley at Old Trafford despite them gathering 11-12 points away from home against the top 6 in the past three seasons because we have better players and should have a better coach too. Your standards are clearly lower.
 
United would be better spent throwing all their money the billion or so spent post SAF into anti-aging research, and turning SAF back to a 40 year old so he can manage again.
 
I'm just stunned that the club negotiated a generous arrangement where they could start the season a week later, and then didn't bother to actually utilise that period to properly prepare. The arrogance to just rock up at Old Trafford yesterday in that condition is staggering, Again, contrast with Bayern. They win the treble and their staff and players prepare for them to be ready to win 8-0 with no delays less than a month later.

I usually agree with much of what you say, and agree with the general principle of not knee-jerking, but this is genuinely one of the lowest moments supporting United for me. We were embarrassing yesterday and have been all summer. I was ashamed to be supporting that.

Difficult to see what else they could have done to be honest, in terms of planning. A lack of planning is the right complaint though.
 
It is just easier to accept we are a top 6 team and so it is ok to have off games now and then. False expectations of kicking off from last season's position is what is making us to moan our defeats.

If beating Palace at home is false expectations what's the expectations we're supposed to have? Come on man.
 
If beating Palace at home is false expectations what's the expectations we're supposed to have? Come on man.
That isn't my point. We (fans) are expecting to win every game, because we think we are building over last season's position/form. But we are only targeting top 4-6 (as evident by lack of support from our owners/CEO).
Maybe we should revise our expectations.
 
Yes, it is another excuse. It was Palace at home. Pre season and 400 mil spent more or not are not excuse to be trashed by Palace.
If we were dominant team and lost because of bad luck then ok but when you look bad in first game of the season against much weaker side then it is a huge problem.
 
That isn't my point. We (fans) are expecting to win every game, because we think we are building over last season's position/form. But we are only targeting top 4-6 (as evident by lack of support from our owners/CEO).
Maybe we should revise our expectations.

Palace at home still should be an easy win even if we are only targeting top 4 or even 6th.
 
Lack of fitness is not an excuse for Man United to be slapped by Crystal Palace, having precisely 1 good chance (Greenwood) aside from the goal in the process.

Give this Palace team to an unfit Man City and they’d still hammer them. In fact, I think City will beat Wolves tomorrow, a far better team than Palace.

No excuses. We were shit and players like Lindelof, TFM and James all have to go.
The thing is though, we're not as good as City to be able to swath sides away who are much fitter than us. Equal level of fitness and we have superior quality to the majority of teams in the league. As we were yesterday though? Would need to get the early goal to be able to do it.
 
You’ve just come off a 14 game unbeaten run in the prem, on paper the team you have now is stronger than the one that started last season. You looked like a rusty team with no preseason, they looked like a team playing their 3rd competitive match of the season.

I can understand the frustration of losing to Palace at home and dropping the points might prove to be crucial later in the season. But I would not be worried by last nights game, if you’re playing like that by your third match if the season then I’d begin to worry a bit, but right now it’s an annoying loss but no predictor for how the rest of the season will play out.
My view on it. If we're still playing this way a few matches in then that's troublesome.
 
Its not irrelavent. The same thing happened start of 18/19 season after we came second. Club refused to invest to kick on and go for the title and that fecked the squad. I think we got turned over by Brighton first game
 
The thing is, it's really difficult to compare managers in this way because most clubs generally change their managers on an annual or biannual basis. Hodgson is one of the longest serving current managers in the Premier League. Out off the current managers only Dyche, Klopp and Guardiola have spent more time in the Premier League at their current respective clubs. (I'm not counting Nuno and Wilder here because they've spent some time in the lower divisions).

That article you posted doesn't say that "Hodgson has the best record against the top 6 away from home in the PL". The article references the 2016-17 season, where Roy Hodgson wasn't even managing Crystal Palace, Pardew and Allardyce managed them that season. We have to look at the facts as they are NOW, not as they were a couple of years ago. If you wanna look at managers records against the big sides, you have to count the most recent season too. You can't say "Oh last season doesn't suit my point so let's just write that off as irrelevant".

The fact is since Hodgson took over Crystal Palace he has gathered 12 points in three years. Dyche at Burnley has 11 points in the same period (12 points in four years if we include the season your article references). Nuno has 14 points in two years since Wolves got promoted from the Championship. Again, Palace's record is nothing spectacular. And like I said, managers get sacked so often that it's difficult to get a proper comparison here.

And don't get me wrong, I don't think Hodgson is a bad coach, he's done all right at Palace and they have a couple of solid midtable players in their squad. But I would still expect us to beat them and the likes of Burnley at Old Trafford despite them gathering 11-12 points away from home against the top 6 in the past three seasons because we have better players and should have a better coach too. Your standards are clearly lower.

Once again you are arguing a completely different point to the one I was making in the OP. I do expect us to beat Crystal Palace home and away - in ordinary circumstance. No matter what mental gymnastics you may wish to perform, Covid-19 has made these circumstances unusual - to say the least. In a sport where players play at the physical limit conditioning is of massive importance. Covid-19 has disrupted world football in unprecedented ways and as such we’ve not been able to prepare physically for the start of the season whereas Crystal Palace have, this gave them a significant advantage.

I contested the assertion that Palace should be considered a home banker. They’ve done well against the top 6 away. They took 4 points off City at the Etihad in the past two seasons, for example.

Im arguing that there is not much to be learnt from the game yesterday because of our disrupted preparation.
 
Just so it’s clear. Our problem is a lack of match fitness because we didn’t have a pre season and play enough games YET it was us who decided to start pre season late over some pedantic ‘30 day rule’ so that our players wouldn’t get tired from playing and training too much during pre season.

Okay.
We can't have our cake and eat it. It's much better to prioritize lasting the season than going out fast and then doing a Leicester of last season. We were clearly banking on incoming signings and superior quality to see us through this first month until the players are up to speed.
 
In what world are we challenging for the title? Our owners don't strengthen past being top 4 challengers. The issue is that you need to keep strengthening every summer just to at least maintain, which they don't understand. If we do nothing in these last 2 weeks, I wouldn't be surprised if we finished purely mid table, like 8th. There's 9 quality squads in the league who all have reasons to be optimistic and feel like they can fight for top 4 (city, liverpool, chelsea, United, arsenal, spurs, everton, leicester, wolves). We'll do well to even finish 4th as it is.
Exactly. The Arsenalification of United is complete.
 
That isn't my point. We (fans) are expecting to win every game, because we think we are building over last season's position/form. But we are only targeting top 4-6 (as evident by lack of support from our owners/CEO).
Maybe we should revise our expectations.
Which games should we "expect" to win then?
 
Nail on the head. Absolutely farcical. We’re not Man City, we don’t have players who are in top condition and who are professional enough to maintain a basic level of fitness.
We’re the complete opposite and I wouldn’t have trusted our players to keep themselves in good condition with such a short pre season.
This is just ridiculous. Our players were professional enough to keep in shape during the suspension and we blitzed our fixtures due to that. All the teams were on an equal footing with regards to match fitness. However, we had better quality, fitness and professionalism so did better than all the other teams. Now we're saying the players don't keep themselves in shape over a holiday? Wrong. They're in good enough physical shape but that counts for nothing as all the teams will have players in good physical shape.

Good teams regularly lose to bad teams in preseason who are further along with match fitness. When the season starts those bad teams then lose 9/10 times.
 
Losing two seasons in a row at home to Palace is 100% an indicator of where this team is.

A lot of us said we needed to improve by 10-15 points on what we did last season. This was a chance to do it and hit the ground running. Another opportunity wasted by this team.
 
The thing is, it's really difficult to compare managers in this way because most clubs generally change their managers on an annual or biannual basis. Hodgson is one of the longest serving current managers in the Premier League. Out off the current managers only Dyche, Klopp and Guardiola have spent more time in the Premier League at their current respective clubs. (I'm not counting Nuno and Wilder here because they've spent some time in the lower divisions).

That article you posted doesn't say that "Hodgson has the best record against the top 6 away from home in the PL". The article references the 2016-17 season, where Roy Hodgson wasn't even managing Crystal Palace, Pardew and Allardyce managed them that season. We have to look at the facts as they are NOW, not as they were a couple of years ago. If you wanna look at managers records against the big sides, you have to count the most recent season too. You can't say "Oh last season doesn't suit my point so let's just write that off as irrelevant".

The fact is since Hodgson took over Crystal Palace he has gathered 12 points in three years. Dyche at Burnley has 11 points in the same period (12 points in four years if we include the season your article references). Nuno has 14 points in two years since Wolves got promoted from the Championship. Again, Palace's record is nothing spectacular. And like I said, managers get sacked so often that it's difficult to get a proper comparison here.

And don't get me wrong, I don't think Hodgson is a bad coach, he's done all right at Palace and they have a couple of solid midtable players in their squad. But I would still expect us to beat them and the likes of Burnley at Old Trafford despite them gathering 11-12 points away from home against the top 6 in the past three seasons because we have better players and should have a better coach too. Your standards are clearly lower.
If there was a like button, I would have exercised my opinion about this post of yours.
 
Bayern’s a different case again because their season finished earlier. They had a long rest period before the resumption of the CL. This is the disruption of Covid and how it is affecting teams differently.
Also, Bayern is miles better than every other team in their league. Same situation for them as us and they'd win 4-0 instead.
 
It might be irrelevant if we learn lessons and beat Brighton. If we drop more points it’s worrying.
 
Best to write off this whole season as irrelevant as well.
And there will be the Euros next summer so let's write off next season, too, just to be safe. Then there will be the Qatar World Cup to disrupt our season so... maybe 2023/24 will be our year?
 
Completely disagree and actually the game was the perfect indicator on how this season will go. It's Jose's third year all over again when he had taken us second and the board gave him fred dalot and that bald keeper who wouldn't be a starter for Sheffield Wednesday.

This season is just going to be a repeat of that and Ole is getting sacked. Only thing that could prevent this from happening is if we invested heavily these final weeks but there is a bigger chance that my hair will grow back than these owners bringing in the quality we need.
 
One game guys - one game!!!!

nothing more than a pre-season warm up game
 
This is just ridiculous. Our players were professional enough to keep in shape during the suspension and we blitzed our fixtures due to that. All the teams were on an equal footing with regards to match fitness. However, we had better quality, fitness and professionalism so did better than all the other teams. Now we're saying the players don't keep themselves in shape over a holiday? Wrong. They're in good enough physical shape but that counts for nothing as all the teams will have players in good physical shape.

Good teams regularly lose to bad teams in preseason who are further along with match fitness. When the season starts those bad teams then lose 9/10 times.

You mean during a global lockdown when literally all they could do was workout?
We did well immediately after lockdown for four games. What then happened was we started to dwindle and the excuses about playing too many games starting to pop up but it was obvious players were struggling with their fitness.

This isn’t the first time anyway.. there’s been so many phases during the last few years where our players seem to struggle with fitness. The fact you think them managing it for four games post lockdown is praiseworthy shows you the declining standards. We should be like that all the time not for four games a season.
 
It was a desperate display, one where Crystal Palace could have had a couple more. It could have been 1-5 and it wouldn’t have been a shock.

The manner of the loss is extremely concerning and it just emphasizes the disorganization behind the scenes. It calls into question preparation, fitness, discipline and desire and it shines a light on just how slow and inefficient recruitment has been at the club for quite some time.

A loss next week away to Brighton and we will be six points off sides who have strengthened their teams significantly and have new players settling in nicely.

It’s a joke and makes me so angry at Woodward and his incompetence and so disappointed at just how low standards are being lowered to excuse how badly run we are as a club these days.

It was Crystal Palace at home and it was a weekend ruiner. I love football, but haven’t been able to stomach any other games. The familiar sense of dread is back!
 
Think it’s obvious we weren’t match sharp at all. Some of them were generally atrocious, making mistakes you just wouldn’t see from them normally. Palace just looked quicker and sharper. Hopefully we can get up to speed quick as I could easily see 3 defeats on the bounce if they play as bad as yesterday.

This is what many of the people that were saying we shouldn’t push for the Europa were predicting might happen. It’s screwed with our preparations for this season and we could be in big trouble.
 
Depends what our ambition is.

If you lose 3 or 4 games in this league. You won't finish first. So if the clubs ambition isn't to finish first then no worries... It's just one loss out of about 6 so we can just write it off.

As a fan though, I thought our ambition was to kick on this season and bridge the gap to challenge for the league, but it seems the clubs ambition is to finish fourth.

We just need to look at the reality, we lost the first game, the team is unfit, the squad doesn't have the depth of our rivals and the mood around the club is poor. The deja vu of Mourinhos third season is clear to see.
 
We should have wrote some of our players off as irrelevant.
 
Once again you are arguing a completely different point to the one I was making in the OP. I do expect us to beat Crystal Palace home and away - in ordinary circumstance. No matter what mental gymnastics you may wish to perform, Covid-19 has made these circumstances unusual - to say the least. In a sport where players play at the physical limit conditioning is of massive importance. Covid-19 has disrupted world football in unprecedented ways and as such we’ve not been able to prepare physically for the start of the season whereas Crystal Palace have, this gave them a significant advantage.

I contested the assertion that Palace should be considered a home banker. They’ve done well against the top 6 away. They took 4 points off City at the Etihad in the past two seasons, for example.

Im arguing that there is not much to be learnt from the game yesterday because of our disrupted preparation.
I'm trying to show you that Crystal Palace's away record or overall record against the big sides isn't as impressive as you claim. Like I mentioned in my original reply to you, Palace have only won two matches against the top 8 sides in the last 13 months. Both of them coming against us at Old Trafford. And Hodgson doesn't have the best away record against the top 6 either, like you claimed. Nuno for example has bettered him in only two years for example, like I mentioned in my previous reply. Get your facts straight.

I agree that Covid has clearly disrupted football and it has disrupted some clubs more than others. Our last season was longer because of the Europa League but our coaching staff has known for a long time when the season would start and what the fixture schedule looked like. In my opinion we've had more than enough time to plan and prepare against Palace despite the Covid disruption. Not only did we lose, but we played badly. What we can learn from yesterday is that our coaching staff and players simply haven't prepared themselves well enough for this season. After yesterday's performance I'm afraid we're playing catch up already.

Last season Wolves went out in the quarter finals of the Europa League, effectively ending their season only about 5 days before ours. But despite that they beat Sheffield United fairly comfortably last weekend. And Sheffield had the benefit of a longer pre-season, just like Crystal Palace. Now how did Wolves manage that win despite similar circumstances to United I wonder? My guess is that they were simply better prepared.
 
We can't have our cake and eat it. It's much better to prioritize lasting the season than going out fast and then doing a Leicester of last season. We were clearly banking on incoming signings and superior quality to see us through this first month until the players are up to speed.

I’m sorry but how is delaying our pre season by two weeks now going to benefit us next year? It has hindered us now.
After facing Leicester on the final day we didn’t play competitive football for two weeks and played two games in a week. Why did the players then need another entire month of not playing or training?
What was the benefit of this for A notoriously bad group of players fitness wise?
Banking on new signings and our superior quality is stupid considering we’re again notoriously bad at signing players in an efficient manner and we have inconsistent players.
The decision to delay pre season was beyond stupid and it’s proven to be stupid and our next game is against a team with exceptional fitness levels so there is a fairly good chance it’ll get worse. Why would we Prioritise next spring?
Woodward and lack of investment will get all the headlines but to be honest I’m kinda get a bit tired of our stupid coaching staff. They were bailed out last season by the fact we have got some very exceptionally talented players.
 
It’s not. You read the situation and play to it. You’ve seen your boys all week look leggy and not sharp. You see your opponent look sharp and firing. You don’t set your team up to attack like they’re 15 games into a season!
this is where a managers experience comes into play. You pick a team that will play for the 0-0 and the odd counter attack goal here. You know you’re handicapped but playing and pretending like we’re not yesterday was shocking decision making by Ole&co. Play to your conditions!

Ole talked about how much fitter they are all week- why did he set up an attacking team plan that pretended there’s no difference? They slaughtered us in transitions because only Scott was fit enough to run back. Bruno and Pogba were in full attack mode casually losing high risk balls in dangerous areas of transition.

Don’t pretend it was ok. It was a clear lack of experience and judgement by the coaching staff.
 
And there will be the Euros next summer so let's write off next season, too, just to be safe. Then there will be the Qatar World Cup to disrupt our season so... maybe 2023/24 will be our year?

I'm writing off all our seasons until the Glazers or Woodward are gone.

There really isn't any hope left. The club is dead, living off past glories.
 
I'm writing off all our seasons until the Glazers or Woodward are gone.

There really isn't any hope left. The club is dead, living off past glories.
Yeah, that's probably the realistic take unfortunately. The Glazers are still taking out dividend ls every year, the value of the club is increasing so I can't see them leaving any time soon. We're probably looking at 15-20 years without a league title, a la Arsenal.