Manchester United 0:1 Atletico Madrid

Bringing on Mata to save the day tells you how bad the whole club has become.

Season over in mid March is the lowest I've ever seen this club in 30 years.

Harry190 said:

Under a Klopp or a Guardiola, it's likely it would greatly help.

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I doubt either of them will have great success with the current crop of players at Man United.
Pep will probably need 3 windows and replace 6 to 8 players to get the team playing his football.
Klopp won't be able to play his high intensity game with the available players at the club.

Rangnick only had a few months without pre season to implement his tactics. Being not able to bring even one player doesn't help either.
There is only so much a coach can do under the circumstances.

I don't know in which world Scholes is living, if he is really convinced Man United can get any coach they want bar Klopp and Guardiola.

B. Munich said:

I doubt either of them will have great success with the current crop of players at Man United.
Pep will probably need 3 windows and replace 6 to 8 players to get the team playing his football.
Klopp won't be able to play his high intensity game with the available players at the club.

Rangnick only had a few months without pre season to implement his tactics. Being not able to bring even one player doesn't help either.
There is only so much a coach can do under the circumstances.

I don't know in which world Scholes is living, if he is really convinced Man United can get any coach they want bar Klopp and Guardiola.

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Not playing Maguire would be a good display by Ralf for starters. If there ever was a player who can easily be benched, it's him

1. Lousy Ref
2. horrendous defending for the goal
3. We have less than 5 7/10 players in terms of performance in the entire squad this year. That is the crux of the problem
4. one half good one half bad has become a habit

The things with subs if they work you get praised, if not then everybody wades in. Think the subs not working was more down to some of the players involved and their attitude than them being wrong. At another moment in time Pogba and Rashford would have changed the game. Only they know why they are not doing that.

First half I think we did pretty well, we expected that Atleti would be dogged, and they have enough experience in their team and managerial setup to play anti football. That being said, our problem this season has been missed chances, we are just not clinical enough in front of goal, which is something considering our firepower up front. The ref…….this needs looking into as from where I was sitting, this guy couldn’t have refereed Subuteo (yes I’m that old). As for Ralph I think he gets unnecessary stick, what we’re people expecting of him? He’s come in and done a decent job in this absolute shit show of a club, it isn’t him that is the problem but above and below him.

Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber said:

1. Lousy Ref
2. horrendous defending for the goal
3. We have less than 5 7/10 players in terms of performance in the entire squad this year. That is the crux of the problem

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What the feck happened from last season though? How do you get from being a half decent team to improving it with genuine quality and then get so, so much worse? Maguire, Shaw have very good tournament at national level and they come back as league one players. Half the team or more looks like they've forgot how to play football. I've never seen such a monumental drop in performance from an entire team before. Even our so called ability to rely on individual quality is gone, for the most part.

Barnslig said:

I mean, yeah? That obviously isn't going to happen, so who would you suggest then?

I can't see a single manager available out there that would turn the tide for us. I can see a lot of managers out there that can paper over the cracks for a shorter amount of time, but that doesn't do anything to address the deeper issues creating the cracks in the first place. What I was trying to get at (without having seen all of the post match due to regional blocks) is how the players repeatedly avoids scathing criticism while the pundits harp on about how world class managers will fix all of our issues.

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The former Bayern Munich guy, with Germany now.

The most important person at any club is the manager. How many points are Pep, Klopp, Tuchal, etc worth to their respective clubs over the course of a season? Unfortunately, it seems to be the one appointment we just can't get right. Getting it wrong again doesn't bear thinking about.

Just as a point of interest - the two main contenders for the hot seat at OT have both just been dumped out of the CL having been favourites to progress. Oh well...

Judas said:

He was impressively shit. All the subs were, apart from Matic.

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I like Matic, you could never accuse him of not trying. Mata is just old. The others however should have offered much more.

B. Munich said:

I doubt either of them will have great success with the current crop of players at Man United.
Pep will probably need 3 windows and replace 6 to 8 players to get the team playing his football.
Klopp won't be able to play his high intensity game with the available players at the club.

Rangnick only had a few months without pre season to implement his tactics. Being not able to bring even one player doesn't help either.
There is only so much a coach can do under the circumstances.

I don't know in which world Scholes is living, if he is really convinced Man United can get any coach they want bar Klopp and Guardiola.

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I noticed they didn't come up with a name of a new manager. What's the betting they would say go after Conte, who I doubt would fit in with Rio's description of what a manager needs to be.

Flappy players moaning about every decision that doesn’t go their way. Focus on what’s happening on the pitch and waken up. Maybe then you can organise yourselves better and not leave a man unmarked at the back post and concede a goal.

Mixed feelings about the match. First half gave hope as we were very good most of the time. Press more organised. But then we fell off the cliff in second half. Maguire is shocking. One of our main problems is that wing backs offer nothing of note in attack and nothing of note in defense. Dalot and Telles are poor defenders but don't make up for it on the other end. They are just average. AWB similar. Shaw when on form is good enough. In comparison with Atletico Marcos Llorrente, Lodi became solid defenders and a dirty little feckers under Diego and are at least hard to get passed by. Other than that we lack one good CB to partner Varane and one or two central mids who would ooze class in midfield. And one young and classy attacker. It is interesting that english bias didn't work. With exception of Shaw we have ABW, Maguire, Lingard, Rashford all not living up to potential and needing replacement.

And a honourable mention to Atletico Madrid. I liked them sometimes in the past even under Diego. But now? The are one of the most despicable bunch of characters and manager I can think of. Hard to play against and hard to get beaten yes. But unwatchable no entertainment poor advertisment for football.

Harry190 said:

The former Bayern Munich guy, with Germany now.

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Hansi Flick. He did work miracles with the team after the sorry football Bayern played under Kovac. But he also had incredible players available. Lewandowski is the obvious example, a 2 time Balon d'Or winner in his prime (if we had lived in a fair world). But he was also able to call upon the incredible Kimmich, the perhaps GOAT of goalkeepers Neuer, Alaba who has replaced Ramos so well he isn't even missed and so on.

We didn’t do enough to win over the two legs, but you have to say.. that was probably the worst refereeing performance we’ve ever come up against in Europe, the decisions were absolutely baffling.. it was basically playing against 12 men

Thought we were alright and deserved to win the game, excellent first half. Referee let them kill the game second half, lost count of the number of times they stopped play and the number of deliberate fouls, but we always knew that could happen. Neither side would get past any other team left in the CL.

Good news now? Poch and ten Haag are both out too, so we have a free run at our next manager, whoever that may be. And maybe finally - FINALLY we can get some direction back for the club.

big_jeffstar said:

We didn’t do enough to win over the two legs, but you have to say.. that was probably the worst refereeing performance we’ve ever come up against in Europe, the decisions were absolutely baffling.. it was basically playing against 12 men

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Yeah and 4 minutes of injury time was a joke. One of their players took a full 30 seconds to take a free kick at the start of that time too, which was pretty hilarious but I guess that's what can happen. I'd be happy if it was us doing it. Referee needs to be stronger, he was a joke.

I usually bet with my son for the extra time minutes. I have never been more than one minute wrong for this season. I betted 6 minutes thinking (thought maybe 7) due to the time wasting in every situation.. free kick, throw in and so on.. for all of second half. There was one free kick that wasted almost two minutes alone..

How they got to 4 is very strange. Was thinking united would score on the extra time but felt like there was no extra time played even.. just some more time wasted.

I thought we pressured very well and made them play a lot more than we normally do. We usually are a lot more passive on the pitch but kicked it up a couple of gears last night and just weren’t clinical enough where it matters. Maguire is done for me, too sloppy, rashford has no confidence and it’s affecting performances massively. Bruno maybe should have had a penalty as well.

On to the ref now, that time when he stopped play and it wasn’t a head injury when we looked very dangerous at the edge of the box and about to cut in for a shot. Why he stopped it for a player down holding his foot is mind blowing, blow for a foul or play on and he done neither. All other decisions were questionable and atletico knew how to play the ref to affect the flow of the game and worked it to their advantage. It’s a shame we are out but not a surprise at all.

It really is the hope that kills you! I’ll be back watching the next UTD match thinking we can do this.
death by a thousand cuts for sure.

Hackman2210 said:

It really is the hope that kills you! I’ll be back watching the next UTD match thinking we can do this.
death by a thousand cuts for sure.

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When I fitrst typed that - auto correct put death by a thousand guys…….

Autocorrect always good for a laugh.

Can't lie the jeering of Maguire gave me flashbacks of the Arsenal fans jeering Xhaka. Is the transformation complete?

No surprise to me at all that we are out. I cannot remember the last time we were good in both halves of a game and against a Simeone team that spells defeat. I don't believe we were even fit enough pre-season to challenge for any trophies and I'm afraid that Ole's reign, despite the occasional good result, set us back rather than took us forward.

I'm not sure what some people here thought RR could do. He's inherited a team where everything seems to be to be smoke and mirrors, with one-off brilliant performances papered over cracks the size of the San Andrea fault.

The board must (but won't) take a huge slice of the blame for this, with some of the appointments (not just managers) nothing short of weird. Our club is in danger of becoming irrelevant.

As for performances last night, Fred was obviously good and I thought Scott McT broke up some of their attacks well in the first half. Almost everyone else was anonymous. DDG made two good saves but I was a bit disappointed he made no attempt to save the header: he has become almost incapable of keeping a clean sheet - although obviously his defence is doing him no favours.

The real problem - and it' been this way for ages is that we are so predictable and so slow in our build up. It doesn't seem to matter who is playing in midfield or for which manager. We simply do not pass the ball well enough or quickly enough. Did we give Cavani the ball in a dangerous area at any stage after he cam on? No, we did not. And in past games when we have created, we've fluffed our lines because we don't have a proper centre forward. Ronaldo has proved he is still a great but he is no No.9. Back in August I said we wouldn't score enough goals to threaten winning a trophy.

It's like groundhog day but have to say again: Pogba simply doesn't put in enough top-class performances, and often looks as if he doesn't care. Sadly, Rashford looks to have caught that bug: he was embarrassing when he came on.

We are simply incapable of breaking down teams who are well drilled and do what their manager tells them. We barely threatened their goal in the second half.

steffyr2 said:

Usually when I check passing stats after a game, they're pretty good. Even though I go in convinced that a player was misplacing half their passes, it turns out that they have a 95% or so passing success rate.
Checking Whoscored for how players did --
Rashford -- 9 passes, 44.4% passing success rate= 4/9 passes completed
Cavani -- 4 passes, 50% passing success rate. Not good but too few passes to be meaningful.
Mata -- 83% passing success rate -- 5/6 -- guess missing one is allowed, so good
Matic -- 23 passes, 100% passing success rate. Kinda good.
Pogba -- 8 passes, 87.5%
Ronaldo -- 35 passes, 94.5% passing success rate -- missed 2 out of 35
Sancho -- 55 passes, 83.6% passing success rate -- made 46 out of 55
Bruno -- 35 passes, 80% passing success rate -- made 28 out of 35
Elanga -- 12 passes, 66.7% accuracy -- made 9 out of 12
McTominay -- 48 passes, 83.3% accuracy -- remember when Scholes reliably made 95%?
Fred was worse -- 48 passes, 72.9% accuracy

DDG only made 68% of his passes, but Oblak made only 44% of his -- so maybe pass completion doesn't really matter (seems like it would watching Rashford give the ball away). Now that I look at it, AM was worse than us. They just scored one more goal. Sad.

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always found passing stats irrelevant (same with possession): it'w hat you do with it. I could pass to you all day at the edge of our own area

kouroux said:

Not playing Maguire would be a good display by Ralf for starters. If there ever was a player who can easily be benched, it's him

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Didn't Rangnick bench him a few games and Maguire was also out injured a few games. I don't follow United that closely but I can't remember the performance without him was so much better. United problems going far beyond Maguire.
The team doesn't look fit enough to play for 90 minutes let alone press with high intensity as Rangnick prefers to play.
It will take 2 to 3 first team additions and a full preseason to implement the basics. To fine tune and perfect the system will take years. Just have to look at Liverpool. Pep managed it little quicker but he got unlimited funds.

I was angry with De Gea’s performance tonight. He just stood rooted to the spot whilst that header came towards him in slow motion.
Any half decent keeper would have reacted to that as there was plenty of time to do something. He really has to go soon.

DomesticTadpole said:

I noticed they didn't come up with a name of a new manager. What's the betting they would say go after Conte, who I doubt would fit in with Rio's description of what a manager needs to be.

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The guy who just lost with his team against Rangnick's Man United?

Honestly I don't see him doing better at Spurs. The football they play is even more dire than United.

If there is one thing that comes out of this game I hope that we finally get off the one game 'sugar high' that seems to drive sentiment about our performances. As a club, we need to get real about our level, we are not good enough to remain in the Champions League this season and we are unlikely to be good enough to be in the Champions League next season either. We should be performing better than we are, but we are not. Time to plan for next season, with complete ruthlessness. Our season is not about the Athleti result. United going out of the CL is merely symptomatic of a chronic case of underachievement. Whoever comes in after Rangnick needs to be utterly brutal. They cannot be a respecter of reputations. There are players here that just need to go.

The second half was pretty awful all round, but I still maintain that was one of the worst and most frustrating refereeing performance I have ever seen in person. Unbelievably bad. I wouldn't necessarily say it effected the outcome of the game, but it made it so annoying to watch and ensured the game could never generate any flow.

I wouldn't be surprised if we saw less than 20 minutes if football out of the 49 in the second half...

fastwalker said:

If there is one thing that comes out of this game I hope that we finally get off the one game 'sugar high' that seems to drive sentiment about our performances. As a club, we need to get real about our level, we are not good enough to remain in the Champions League this season and we are unlikely to be good enough to be in the Champions League next season either. We should be performing better than we are, but we are not. Time to plan for next season, with complete ruthlessness. Our season is not about the Athleti result. United going out of the CL is merely symptomatic of a chronic case of underachievement. Whoever comes in after Rangnick needs to be utterly brutal. They cannot be a respecter of reputations. There are players here that just need to go.

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You mean like when we beat PSG and decided to hire Solskjaer for 3 years? Yeah I'd like us to stop being so reactionary too

Harry190 said:

The former Bayern Munich guy, with Germany now.

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Hansi Flick just joined the German national team. Why would he leave for United with a world cup coming up. As realistic as getting Luis Enrique or Mancini.

Mata for Maguire was such a baffling substitution. Maguire is more likely to get you a goal from a corner or something than current Mata.

B. Munich said:

Hansi Flick just joined the German national team. Why would he leave for United with a world cup coming up. As realistic as getting Luis Enrique or Mancini.

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Because he loves us. That's why he posts here, right, @Hansi Fick ?

B. Munich said:

Didn't Rangnick bench him a few games and Maguire was also out injured a few games. I don't follow United that closely but I can't remember the performance without him was so much better. United problems going far beyond Maguire.
The team doesn't look fit enough to play for 90 minutes let alone press with high intensity as Rangnick prefers to play.
It will take 2 to 3 first team additions and a full preseason to implement the basics. To fine tune and perfect the system will take years. Just have to look at Liverpool. Pep managed it little quicker but he got unlimited funds.

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There you go, if you watched our games, you'd understand how benching Maguire would be a first good step and a confidence boost for the rest of the team.

Yagami said:

Because he loves us. That's why he posts here, right, @Hansi Fick ?

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That's correct!

R'hllor said:

Not sure why people losing their shit, what was expectation here, just passing around the box with no idea, no quality, probably nervs, Ronaldo was dropping outside a box kinda a lot, he was also frustrated. Bruno QQ lord, 24/7 complaining, ref should slap him. Rashford dunno whats going on there, not gonna comment about our captain fridge.

So yea all in all, shit.

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To be fair I think people expected us to get past this pretty bang average AM side when we are at home with a rocking place behind the players. If we were bounced in the final 8 I don’t think folks would have been as upset.

Hansi Fick said:

That's correct!

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There you go. Man United's next manager.... Hansi Fick. You will be f*cked.

Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber said:

1. Lousy Ref
2. horrendous defending for the goal
3. We have less than 5 7/10 players in terms of performance in the entire squad this year. That is the crux of the problem
4. one half good one half bad has become a habit

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We have 0 7/10 players this season.

What happened to the thread on the ref?

It had about 6 pages, seems weird to role it into this (I assume that's where all the posts went) since people were clearly interested in discussing it as a subject in it's own right.