Manchester United 0:3 Manchester City

Matt Varnish · Oct 29, 2023

Jeffthered said:
Well, I had a bit of hope and bit of optimism. But that was embarrassing. I actually feel there needs to be a bit of a bust-up amongst the players. A fight. Something, because sorry to say this, but I see nothing there at all. You cannot continue like this. No way. Quite alarming.

That is a broken team, a broken, dysfunctional set of players who do not wish to be there. I'm feeling very sad, because I genuinely fear for our club this season. We are there for the taking. Every, single team in the Premiership will feel they can beat us. Every single team.

Shocking.

I've had this feeling for a while, they don't look a team, stripping Maguire of the captaincy was a bad move, then giving it to the whiner from Portugal was an even worse one, the bloke looks as though he's about to burst into tears, he couldn't motivate a car with the keys in the ignition.
I don't think Ohno inspires confidence either, we were lucky it was only 3, if he could catch a ball it would've been 1-0.

mitchmouse · Oct 29, 2023

saik said:
When I turned it off he said it absolutely was a penalty.Maybe he changed his stance later on to it being soft but it wasn't a penalty.

You'd be looking at 4-5 penalties every game in that case.

technically it was a pen but as you say (and I did at the time) there should be 6-7 every game. I think Gary eventually said it was a penalty because it was from the moment arsehat Oliver got involved... even Keano saying it was a penalty

peridigm · Oct 29, 2023

Matt851 said:
Our performances in big games under ten hag have generally been absymal

Only big games?

Matt Varnish · Oct 29, 2023

Those saying ETH has to go.
A few questions.
Who replaces him?
Who can get this shower to play as a unit and start winning?
Where is the money going to come from to replace the deadwood?

We can't bring in new players, because the ones we want shot of are on such stupid wages, no-one else will pay them, until these contracts are run down we are in the doldrums for the long term.

DJ_21 · Oct 29, 2023

Who's Kissing Cameras? said:
And what, with Gross, Webster and March?

It’s a lot different coaching average players at an average club with less expectations than it is coaching overpaid players.

Hughie77 · Oct 29, 2023

#07 said:
I'd argue Onana has been our best player today but some of our transfer business has been baffling. We are paying for the lack of any real footballing philosophy at the club and we look very much like what we are: A puffed up midtable team, formed from overpaying for a lot of players that we either didn't need or weren't up to it.

Onana may well have turned a corner? Next season maybe a new keeper. CM, mount ? Now we have a shit load of injuries, that's a problem, all this poor form is from pre season which was dreadfull imo the organisation of it travelling all over the place with no substance behind it.. Hojlund I like but he's young, a proven Striker with him would have been so much better.

Bruno Been rubbish Rashford same . Not enough players stepping up there game.. finish chances then create they can't finish nothing.. and our best finisher is in Spain.. another bad situation handled poorly.. ETH has till the end of the season imo to get improvements or he could well be gone..

Giggsy13 · Oct 29, 2023

It’s 2023 and we started with a team including McT, Maguire, Evans and Lindelof. There was only one out come to expect today. Just start Hannibal, Mainoo and Garnacho moving forward, I’m sick of our bottling senior players.

Who's Kissing Cameras? · Oct 29, 2023

DJ_21 said:
It’s a lot different coaching average players at an average club with less expectations than it is coaching overpaid players.

Coaching players a basic attacking structure and build up should be standard for a Utd coach.

OrcaFat · Oct 29, 2023

Ali Dia said:
Because we don’t have good enough players. We don’t recruit well. We are playing with 2 30 plus free transfer players and Scott McT against an almost perfect city team. When they make mistakes in the market they fix it. We double down. We are always fixing several problems at once. When something is going well another part of the team is failing and holding us back. It’s always going to be like this with the glazers

The bottom line is absolutely that our players are not good enough. It was a tough game, yes, but we had opportunities to create chances we had some possession in dangerous attacking areas and we just aren’t good enough to make anything happen.

We can debate why we don’t have enough good players and we can point fingers of blame but we do not have the quality. So without bothering to defend anything that EtH has done (ever), this bunch of shit players will not perform for any manager on earth, they simply are not able to.

OrcaFat · Oct 29, 2023

Matt851 said:
Our performances in big games under ten hag have generally been absymal

Hasn’t that been true for ten years, more or less? We’ve had some decent results in those games along the way but rarely by being the better team. We haven’t had good enough players throughout that period but the XI that took the field today, on paper alone, looked at least three goals worse than City.

Ali Dia · Oct 29, 2023

OrcaFat said:
The bottom line is absolutely that our players are not good enough. It was a tough game, yes, but we had opportunities to create chances we had some possession in dangerous attacking areas and we just aren’t good enough to make anything happen.

We can debate why we don’t have enough good players and we can point fingers of blame but we do not have the quality. So without bothering to defend anything that EtH has done (ever), this bunch of shit players will not perform for any manager on earth, they simply are not able to.

Every player in that team is in their or entering their prime too apart from KDB who they don’t even need to dismantle us. Our two best players are 30 plus Madrid cast offs with nothing left to prove in the game. One with major doubts about his fitness. We are absolutely clueless when it comes to recruitment. It’s disgusting waste. For the money we’ve spent we should have one the best young and hungry teams in the world with other clubs looking enviously at the players developing at United the same way it was with Rooney and Ronaldo. We are so far off that and it’s on the owners. We will be floggin Casemiro and Varane for years yet too, mark my words. Madrid just casusally go out and buy Bellingham and Camavinga. That’s recruitment at the top end of the game. We are just bluffers.

OrcaFat · Oct 29, 2023

Ali Dia said:
Every player in that team is in their or entering their prime too apart from KDB who they don’t even need to dismantle us. Our two best players are 30 plus Madrid cast offs with nothing left to prove in the game. One with major doubts about his fitness. We are absolutely clueless when it comes to recruitment. It’s disgusting waste. For the money we’ve spent we should have one the best young and hungry teams in the world with other clubs looking enviously at the players developing at United the same way it was with Rooney and Ronaldo. We are so far off that and it’s on the owners. We will be floggin Casemiro and Varane for years yet too, mark my words. Madrid just casusally go out and buy Bellingham and Camavinga. That’s recruitment at the top end of the game. We are just bluffers.

We are bluffers. I assume the likes of Haaland and Bellingham simply do not want to come here. Imo the reason for that is underinvestment dating back to SAF’s time. The squad he left was depleted by years of “no value in the market”. And when you look at that first transfer window under Moyes: what the absolute feck were we doing?

We spent loads of money over the years but we didn’t spend enough on elite players in the first five years of the Glazers ownership. After that we couldn’t afford the best or they didn’t want to come here.

Ali Dia · Oct 29, 2023

OrcaFat said:
We are bluffers. I assume the likes of Haaland and Bellingham simply do not want to come here. Imo the reason for that is underinvestment dating back to SAF’s time. The squad he left was depleted by years of “no value in the market”. And when you look at that first transfer window under Moyes: what the absolute feck were we doing?

We spent loads of money over the years but we didn’t spend enough on elite players in the first five years of the Glazers ownership. After that we couldn’t afford the best or they didn’t want to come here.

Nail on head. We had 2 major chances to reassert our ambition and remain relevant at the very top of the game. When we had the Ronaldo money and when Fergie retired. Both times we shat the bed and we are still paying for it now. We get lucky with the odd player like Bruno and then add layers of mediocrity or being kind unsuitable players around it and it peters out. In a Fergie squad Bruno would have been the difference between second and first at least once during his time here. Probably the same with Pogba, at the beginning at least. This club just wears everyone down (players managers and fans) and it’s all on the absentee leech owners who set the tone and toxic work environment.

Winrar · Oct 29, 2023

Could've easily been 5 or 6 nil this. Atrocious from start to finish.

pocco · Oct 29, 2023

DJ_21 said:
It’s a lot different coaching average players at an average club with less expectations than it is coaching overpaid players.

It might not be though. You have to try something. You could have said the same about Fergie at Aberdeen. Klopp at Dortmund etc.

colombianmancunian · Oct 29, 2023

lex talionis said:
Are either realistically available?

Zidane is without a club. Ancelotti’s contract is up summer 2024.

DJ_21 · Oct 29, 2023

pocco said:
It might not be though. You have to try something. You could have said the same about Fergie at Aberdeen. Klopp at Dortmund etc.

We’ve tried everything though. That’s the thing. We let fergie pick a replacement. Then we went for managers that have got a good trophy record. Then we tried someone that knows the club and the DNA. Now we’ve got who was suppose to be one of the up and coming managers.

Matt851 · Oct 29, 2023

DJ_21 said:
We’ve tried everything though. That’s the thing. We let fergie pick a replacement. Then we went for managers that have got a good trophy record. Then we tried someone that knows the club and the DNA. Now we’ve got who was suppose to be one of the up and coming managers.

Ah the we've tried everything trope.

You look at clubs that have been successful in recent years. They have generally had a good director of football, and an agreed vision of the style of football they are intending to play. Managers and players are then recruited to fit that vision.

We haven't had a competent dof or sporting structure in place. And we have recruited managers with wildly different approaches who have then brought in a mish mash of players. Moyes was a good manager but it didn't seem that hard to predict he would struggle to make the step up. Both van goal and mourinho were past their best. It was idiotic to appoint ole on a permanent basis. Ten hag is the first vaguely promising and progressive manager we have appointed but even he was a big risk given his experience was just in Holland. Handing him such an influence over transfers was stupid ans again a function of a lack of a competent dof / footballing structure

Lemon Moon · Oct 31, 2023

Laurencio said:
Sure, but how do you do that? There are many ways to counter attack. I don't see how you can play Antony, Rashford, Dalot and Regullion without getting broken down easily and having every counter end up in a chance for City.

Say we do counter after a city attack. Stones drops down into defence. Rashford is covered by Walker. Rodri sits in front of the defence. We generally are quite poor at ending our counters with a shot which leaves us vulnerable.

City regain the ball, pass it to Rodri. He has 3 exceptional ball players ahead of him, Haaland and Doku against our two centrebacks, a wingback and Casemiro. Rashford doesn't track back quickly, Bruno is too far up field, Antony has just lost the ball, Dalot is rushing back and Amrabat has been left standing . They would easily overwhelm us, or play us deep for a cut-back which has been extremely effective against us.

Well what a shambles that performance was.

My idea on answering your counter attack question 'how do you do that?' Is...
This is effectively what our plan was first half, yes we should (and did try) to break quickly and play direct on the turn of possession from a city attack and with split forwards and one or two midfielders (we chose McTominay) the play has to be decisive and clinical. Both of which we were not on the day. However by having defensive runners in the centre and wider areas out of possession we try to play anti football, aggressively. The idea to harass City into losing the ball (or just try not to get ripped apart by them) and then with quick, 1 or 2 touch passes into forward/wide areas to try to score.

To play this way against the best club team on the planet I feel is the best way to try and win the game. And the idea kind of worked first half but we made poor decisions in the attacking third and wasn't clinical at all. And taking Amrabat off at half time (although he was on a yellow) also hindered our aggressive defensive plan. Of course selection errors also effected the teams performance. I think the teams shape would have been better served for this approach going as a diamond with split forwards.
And that soft penalty didn't help.

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Manchester United 0:3 Manchester City

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