25
It's not nail in the coffin though, is it?
He hasn't played at a pretty good level for ages (one season where he did?). All he's added since is filling the space on the pitch.
The second goal was an atrocious mistake for any professional footballer to make.
I disagree. Although it's a shame that the player we have now barely resembles that monstrous winger we used to have, he's been reliable and a pretty consistent performer while playing right back this year for me. Rafa should start every game and it's one of the issues I have with van Gaal that he doesn't get a look-in but I find that hard to hold against Valencia.
I was thinking more the absolute lack of presence as a defensive figure, which allowed most of Arsenal's attack to come through our right hand side. If that was a "brilliant" performance then I severely worry for the future of our defence.
Valencia was watching Monreal and then just decided to run inside instead. He needs to be talking to Di Maria and telling him to drop back if he does decide to do that and it didn't look like there was any communication between them to me.
Definitely mate, Arsenal's best player tonight. Put Monreal's and Welbeck's goals on a plate for them and he was a defensive rock for them as well stifling most of United's attacks.
What about saying to himself "feck it" and try someone else at RB instead? Until further notice, we have 2 natural defenders who can play there (Rafael and McNair) and we all know how important it is in any discipline to play a natural defender at the back.
I wouldn't go as far as say that his performances improved. He fit for a role for some time as a wingback, but that appeared to be borrowed time more than anything else.
+1 - it was a bad day fr AV and several others. It just cost us.
He hasn't been particularly bad, sure, but I just don't think he's been anything really.
I'm pretty sure that this lead to the first goal, as he was chasing down Sanchez and remained out of position the entire time. Smalling covered for a while, however, both decided to play right center back, and allowed Monreal time and space to score.
Or maybe he was deflecting blame off Valencia like he always does and always will for any player as van Gaal does single out players as individuals.
Realistically, We were slight underdogs against Arsenal at the time of the mistake (30 minutes or so to go at home vs 90 or 120 away), and Liverpool are still in the competition so even if you only give Villa and the winner of Bradford-Reading a combined 5 percent chance of winning the cup, you'd still have to say we were a hair under 25 percent at most to win it (guesstimate: Arsenal 27, United 23, Liverpool 45, Blackburn/Villa/Bradford/Reading 5).
2 seasons... We won the title in 2013
He let him come inside onto his right foot every single time, which is exactly what he wanted to do. If Valencia was putting up any sort of fight Sanchez would have had to go outside onto his left foot a few times to get the ball past him, but he didnt need to do that at all. And this is the third of the game that he was actually in his right back position. For the other two thirds of the game Sanchez didnt have to beat him because he wasnt there
He made many and cant make up for them with a couple of good tackles. Those good tackles need to be on top of defending well over 90 minutes and not making individual errors not instead of them
