Manchester United 9:0 Southampton

I want to be that guy. For their offside goal, we got lucky but, it's a really bad sign, this is the 3rd time already this season we've been caught by quick freekicks. First Spurs goal and there was the other day when AWB got caught napping. We were a bit sloppy for Adam's other chance which he should have buried. Particularly happy that DDG was absolutely livid for both though, a clean sheet to him means as much all the goals the strikers were getting.

Other than that, what a damn performance, desire to actually keeping the foot on the gas. Luke Shaw and AWB were simply outstanding, Shaw in 45 min was my MOTM but, then again AWB did it for the full 90 and while Ings was offside, he wasn't to know and that was a brilliant tackle in the box.

Been saying for a bit, we need our strikers scoring and yes just one game but, hope they all kick on from here, if that happens, we stand a good chance to at least keep pace with City who don't look like they will drop many points from here on out.

lex talionis said:

Our fullbacks — both of them — were outstanding. Staying the obvious, if both our fullbacks can consistently put in performances like this, we can stand up with any club on the planet.

No Pogba, either. Incredible.

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Just life without Pogba, we're back to scoring for fun. Penny for thought what's in Pogba's mind?

RedDevil@84 said:

With Carlos and Cafu on either side, this was fun to watch

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Cafu started as a winger also. Hmm..

Tapori said:

Equalled with Ipswich 9-0 we had
ANDY COLE

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Ipswich were the whipping boys back then. Not Soton this season. And we are building a team now. Back then we were already a beast. Just try comparing player with player for a start.

This is a more convincing result even with the sending offs, IMO.

Galactic said:

Only one thing was in my mind after the 4th goal. Goal difference.

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Same.

I was hoping at halftime that Ole and the coaching staff would be drilling it into them that in the last decade goal difference has cost us a title and a CL position, so it was vital to rack up the goals.

BulgarianDevil91 said:

I don't think people should over-celebrate this win. We lost to fecking Sheffield United, beating 10 men over 90 mins should be nothing to go over the top about.

Also, VAR is idiotic.

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Yeah heaven forbid people are happy over a record tying win in the Premier League

BulgarianDevil91 said:

I don't think people should over-celebrate this win. We lost to fecking Sheffield United, beating 10 men over 90 mins should be nothing to go over the top about.

Also, VAR is idiotic.

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Too late. I have already watched the highlights thrice.

Ruthless. Clearly attacking patterns of play in training were on show today.

We are now officially the top scoring team in the premier league.

Yes.

Isotope said:

Just life without Pogba, we're back to scoring for fun. Penny for thought what's in Pogba's mind?

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This is really unfortunate situation. We all know pogba wants to contribute as much as possible. But, we don’t have a good system to fully use him. Probably just a mismatch really.

city-puma said:

This is really unfortunate situation. We all know pogba wants to contribute as much as possible. But, we don’t have a good system to fully use him. Probably just a mismatch really.

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Agreed. It's just very unfortunate, we don't use a system to use a world class player like him properly. Yes, I do think he's world class.

We can put the SU game down as a blip and nothing more. We are damn good.

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Starting XI average positions...

Bruno and Cavani's movement in these central areas is devastating. So much wisdom there it is unreal. Nice to see Shaw featuring so far forward, really has turned a corner in that regard and was our biggest chance creator (equal to Bruno but played less minutes).

In our 2 games (4 halves) with Southampton, Southampton took the first half 2-0, but lost the subsequent 3 halves as 3-0, 4-0 and 5-0.

I like random uniformity like that.

Nickelodeon said:

In our 2 games (4 halves) with Southampton, Southampton took the first half 2-0, but lost the subsequent 3 halves as 3-0, 4-0 and 5-0.

I like random uniformity like that.

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So, quarters then?

I just arrived at work and we still won 9-0. Today is a good day

So much for the "happy with the score" mantra we see when subs are made.

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We looked really up for it right from the start which was good: i think we'd have won even if they had 11 men but as some have said, we were caught at the back a couple of times an got lucky with their disallowed goal. Good to see we didn't fall into the trap (as we sometimes have) of "finding it difficult" to play against 10 men.

I thought Scott McT had a fantastic game as did Cavani and the pace dropped when he went off. It was good to see Martial step up with good finishes but (and I can't believe I'm agreeing with Savage), Cavani should start ahead of him every time; I didn't realise he's younger than Jamie Vardy who obviously starts whenever he's fit.

A stand-out feature was that we've finally worked out how to cross a ball - let's just hope it wasn't a one-off. Very good performances all round but you do have to wonder if part of that was Southampton losing their heads after the sending off (and having a seriously weakened team to start with)

Sultan said:

My moan is being robbed of possible further goals due to the lack of injury time.

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That is fair enough. 3 minutes was ridiculous.

Sultan said:

My moan is being robbed of possible further goals due to the lack of injury time.

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Thats very hypothetical though - there's no guarantee we would have scored, especially if you consider Southampton would have been desperate to not concede 10. At most we'd have been given an 3 minutes so its not some done deal that many are making it out to be.

Nice win, great for the goal difference which could play a factor down the line in this tightly packed season and table. Nice to see us going for the jugular when we seem to have let games die over the past few years from dominant positions

BulgarianDevil91 said:

I don't think people should over-celebrate this win. We lost to fecking Sheffield United, beating 10 men over 90 mins should be nothing to go over the top about.

Also, VAR is idiotic.

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If you can’t over celebrate wjnning 9-0 then I don’t know why you bother!

Northstand said:

The second red was actually in the 87th minute mate.

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My mistake. Makes bt going on about the pen and red incident seem even sillier

Ming boggling how much media post-analysis is revolving around an 87th minute Red card at 6 fecking nil.

And when we smashed Leeds for 6, it was all about "how well Leeds played."

Dont know why people are feeling sorry for southampton. Where were the clear and obvious ref mistakes? They were all the right decisions

Annihilate Now! said:

Thats very hypothetical though - there's no guarantee we would have scored, especially if you consider Southampton would have been desperate to not concede 10. At most we'd have been given an 3 minutes so its not some done deal that many are making it out to be.

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You saying they weren't desperate not to concede the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th or 9th goals? Is 10 when you really try to start defending?

MalcolmTucker said:

You saying they weren't desperate not to concede the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th or 9th goals? Is 10 when you really try to start defending?

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They clearly tightened up after half time, it was only when they started getting tired that we scored - why we took 25 minutes to score our 5th goal... even then after the 5th and 6th (a long ranger) they remained fairly tight until the penalty (was just that Martial chance really).

Their heads totally dropped after the penalty which I imagine the feeling of an unjust red card and playing with 9 men would do to you... but when the 9th goes in yeah, I imagine the prospect of going into double figures/breaking the record would probably give them a boost to not want to concede.

9 shots on goal, 9 goals scored. Sometimes statistics are beautiful.

Fun fact: Southamptons xG was almost exactly the same as the last time we played them (0.50 then, 0.51 now).

justsomebloke said:

9 shots on goal, 9 goals scored. Sometimes statistics are beautiful.

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and a header ?

Annihilate Now! said:

They clearly tightened up after half time, it was only when they started getting tired that we scored - why we took 25 minutes to score our 5th goal... even then after the 5th and 6th (a long ranger) they remained fairly tight until the penalty (was just that Martial chance really).

Their heads totally dropped after the penalty which I imagine the feeling of an unjust red card and playing with 9 men would do to you... but when the 9th goes in yeah, I imagine the prospect of going into double figures/breaking the record would probably give them a boost to not want to concede.

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I think you're pushing it! They conceded in the 87th, 90th, and 93rd minute. They were completely fecked. Absolutely no way they don't concede another if we kept playing for another few minutes in my opinion.

tayside red said:

and a header ?

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That's included in shots on goal, isn't it?

This is the Opta definition:

A shot on target is defined as any goal attempt that:

• Goes into the net regardless of intent.
• Is a clear attempt to score that would have gone into the net but for being saved by the goalkeeper or is stopped by a player who is the last-man with the goalkeeper having no chance of preventing the goal (last line block).

Shots directly hitting the frame of the goal are not counted as shots on target, unless the ball goes in and is awarded as a goal.

Shots blocked by another player, who is not the last-man, are not counted as shots on target.

Harry Harries said:

I think you're pushing it! They conceded in the 87th, 90th, and 93rd minute. They were completely fecked. Absolutely no way they don't concede another if we kept playing for another few minutes in my opinion.

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I dunno, just think not wanting to be on the end of a record-breaking loss is a pretty good motivator for a final 2 or 3 minutes!

Anyway either way its totally hypothetical - no guarantees we do or don't score!

justsomebloke said:

That's included in shots on goal, isn't it?

This is the Opta definition:

A shot on target is defined as any goal attempt that:

• Goes into the net regardless of intent.
• Is a clear attempt to score that would have gone into the net but for being saved by the goalkeeper or is stopped by a player who is the last-man with the goalkeeper having no chance of preventing the goal (last line block).

Shots directly hitting the frame of the goal are not counted as shots on target, unless the ball goes in and is awarded as a goal.

Shots blocked by another player, who is not the last-man, are not counted as shots on target.

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That looks like a VAR explanation
a header was always a header not a shot when I played football

Albeit a bit sorry for Southampton (who beat Pool the other day!), I'm very happy with the team's professional performance. It's not easy to get into second gear when leading 4-0 against 10 men but we did it in a professional way without much fuss.

tayside red said:

That looks like a VAR explanation
a header was always a header not a shot when I played football

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Yeah well, in shots statistics it isn't. Fortunately, as it would considerably decrease the information value of that stat for no good reason. There's other statistics that tells you about headers, if you need to know about that. In effect, the stat shows attempts that would have gone in if a player hadn't stopped it. They could have called this something other than "shots on target", but it's not really very complicated to understand?

No idea what "VAR explanation" has to do with this.

Not sure much is gained from analysing formation and average positions in this game, we were playing against 10 men from the off. Happiness with the result and performance from nearly everyone(VDB ), and that some players that needed goals got them is all to really take from it. We really needed a match like that after the last few.

I usually nit pick at certain things as there is always room for improvement but that was an outstanding display to be fair.

We always, always without fail start slow and struggle to break teams down.

To play against 10 men whose focus is to defend from the 2nd minute filled me with dread - but the desire and application to move the ball quicker than we have been and get into space was there from the get go. Really good to see.

We were ruthless, we played good football and we got plenty of goals. We could have easily score more.

Dan James finish was top class, really neat finish.

Agree with the obvious:
Not a pen on Martial. He dived (why he's diving at 6-0 up is beyond me, no need)
Southamptons goal was never offside
Injury time was too short.

Regardless - we were still winning that game by a massive margin so none of them things impacted anything overall.

I've changed my mind on nit picking - i'm going to have a little blast at Martial. He's such an annoying player!
Even when we are coasting - he's just jogging, not moving into space and looking grumpy as shit. He scored twice but really didnt look like he was arsed in the slightest. Cavani shows him up every single game, we are much much better when he leads the line.

Quite pleasing to see AWB having a good game - long overdue.
Shaw was immense again - having such a good season

Fantastic result. Something to wallow in for a while. It pays to bear in mind Nick Hornby's well-chosen words: "The natural state of the football fan is one of bitter disappointment". We'll be back to that soon enough. So let's enjoy this.

Obviously a result like this is an outlier, in every sense. But to take something general from it, I think that this and the Leeds result at least show that we are capable of doing devastating damage to teams that do not employ a cautious approach, or isn't able to implement such an approach effectively. We're now a team you need to stop, as the first order of priority - and doing so requires you to really bring your A-game defensively.

This result is already feeling underrated. Teams play against ten men all the time, yet how often do you see a mauling like this? It's easier said than done. We took them to pieces. Relentless.

We'll have gone back to the dressing room annoyed we didn't get double figures.

Real Name said:

Ole again late with the subs!!

Anyway is this some record?

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"Late with the subs"? He made two substitutions at half time, and the third at 60 minutes....

Judas said:

This result is already feeling underrated. Teams play against ten men all the time, yet how often do you see a mauling like this? It's easier said than done. We took them to pieces. Relentless.

We'll have gone back to the dressing room annoyed we didn't get double figures.

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Yeah not gonna lie, quite disappointed we didn't get 10 and break the record. Never gonna forget this match though, goes down in the history books.