Could do with Morgan in there..
Is Smalling the best defender in the league?
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) was joined by comedian Ali Woods to look back at the best and worst moments of a rollercoaster season with the annual United Hour Awards.
Has Ten Hag been sacked yet? We're not sure and we hope not, but it's looking more likely as the days pass.
Who should replace him and why is it taking so long to make a decision?
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Ran out of the thread yesterday when you couldn't answer people's questions and now come back when the team is doing shit. What's wrong with you?
"Ran out the thread"
Jaysus
Yeah, with your tail between your legs. You still haven't been able to answer what people asked you."Ran out the thread"
Jaysus
"Tail between your legs", jaysus. Are you Ron Pickering? They were one day ago, you nonce. Some of us don't live on the forum.
Smalling not been great today but nobody has. Just thought I'd have a bit of a wind up. It worked
.The match has wound me up, not you. Although I do find it incredibly sad that you've came in here to play "I told you so" when Smalling hasn't even been at fault for any of the goals."Tail between your legs", jaysus. Are you Ron Pickering? They were one day ago, you nonce. Some of us don't live on the forum.
Smalling not been great today but nobody has. Just thought I'd have a bit of a wind up. It worked
I can't see how he's at fault for:
Blind and Young get eaten up on our left and Darmian letting Sanchez go.
Darmian getting pissed on by Sanchez.
Him or Young should've followed Ozil more closely though, but he was probably expecting Blind to get destroyed by Walcott so went to cover instead.
Blind and Young get eaten up on our left and Darmian letting Sanchez go.
Darmian getting pissed on by Sanchez.
Him or Young should've followed Ozil more closely though, but he was probably expecting Blind to get destroyed by Walcott so went to cover instead.
Not really at fault today, one of the few players who hasn't been terrible.
Only united player who had an Ok game.. Martial had an on game too..
I don't think he was okay at all, but difficult to put blame on individual players when the entire team is playing bad. In particular, I think that he was in no men's land in the first two goals, no idea what he was doing there.
I think that our defense need Schneiderlin ahead of them in order to be able to function well. Especially in away matches.
I think that our defense need Schneiderlin ahead of them in order to be able to function well. Especially in away matches.
Smalling was the least of our worries today, Blind, Darmian and Young all had worse games.
Too much pressure on him as he is expected to defend for both him and blind, it's re ally noticeable how lop sided our defence gets because he has to cover for or compete for the ball in place of blind. I imagine he is looking forward to playing alongside jones which seems inevitable now.
Yep, agree with this even though I really like him. It was far from great game for him, I have no idea how people can praise him after game like this when he was caught out of position numerous times.
Blind, Young, Darmain were terrible today....and why we conceeded 3 so quickly. But this was compounded by the slowest midfield in living memory. OK Herrera is injured. Why no Schniderlin.
If he had a bit more of Jones's lack of composure and archaic 'put your body on the line' mentality he might've gotten blocks on a few of them.
He was fine today. Him and Martial are the only players who should walk out of this match with any credit.
Oh, I like him too and he is still our best defender. However, I don't think that he was any better than our other defenders today (well, maybe better than Darmian who was trully awful). Anyway, it was a collective bad performance from our defense and midfield, so there is no point on carefully looking at individual performances. After all, both a 3/5 and 5/10 means that that player was bad, and I think that our entire defense (plus midfield duo) was on that region of rating.
I think that only Martial can hold the head high today.
He was fine today.
We tend to overrate ridiculously our players when they have a few good games in a row.
He was as bad as the rest of them.
When they have almost a dozen months of good games you mean?
Can't ask him to defend for two against big teams.
Jones should be given a chance to form a partnership with him and Blind should go to LB till Shaw is back.
Jones should be given a chance to form a partnership with him and Blind should go to LB till Shaw is back.
It's a game where someone like Kompany or Vidic would have taken charge and shut the whole thing down right after we conceded the first. He's a very good defender but he's not a defensive leader and organiser which is the difference I feel.
With all due respect, he was guilty in letting Ozil all alone on the second goal and let Sanchez all the space to shoot with his strong foot on the third goal. That doesn't count how many times he let other players all alone with a free shot that went to DDG.
That being said, it must be his first extremely bad performance since he went stark raving bonkers at the Etihad last season.
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Fine today. Might be time to bring Jones in to partner him and move Blind to LB for the rest of the season. We are still trying to work out how to reorganise after the awful injury to Shaw.
Agreed.
And he was somewhere doing something for the first half. No idea where and what was he doing, but certainly he wasn't defending.
I actually think that in the first half he was worse than Blind, though in the second half was better. Still it was a very bad performance from him, as it was from the other three defenders and Carrick + Schweiny.
Actually, it would be very interesting to see how this defense would do against good teams if they don't have Schneiderlin and one of Carrick/Schweiny ahead of them. Despite that our defense was quite good in the first few matches, I think that the main reason for that was the protection from the midfield rather than our defense being that great.
It maybe is time for Jones getting a go. While, I like Blind, there is no harm in trying other combinations, and we should try a bit Smalling + Jones in defense.
Wtf are you on about? TV manager, never played football right? at the second goal he was covering th potential run behind, Ozil stopped his run, it is extremely difficult to defend this. Darmian shouldn't let Alexis to flick the ball to set up the attack at the first place and Bllind if he was actual defender having a bit of speed needed for dealing with pacey attackers like Walcott wouldn't let him that much of space to cut back which is always hard to defend. It was a good goal at speed from Arsenal. Smalling not having a big part on the goal. Smalling's been extraordinary this season, sometimes he looks lie he's defending alone, all the time covering for his out of his depth co-players..
Second goal is exactly the example of how he defends and covers for everybody, you could see he's ready to cover for Blind who struggles to be a bit more aggresive for Ramsey, being that Shaw he wouldn't let Ramsey to have that much of space in the first place, anyway he also has great recovery speed unlike Blind so Smalling has all right to be worried and lured away to potentially cover for Blind. Walcott has a bit of luck to control the ball behind but good use of agility at the same time, Carrick should do a bit better in that situation, than it's completely on Darmian. Alexis is great individually but it shouldn't be that easiy for him. What can Smalling do there? he's running behind to potentially cover for Darmian. Carrick being on holiday should have come to help also, I believe schneiderlin wouldn't jogg there like him and would do better to help stop Sanchéz.
Conceding three goals as a team is not always a good performance for defense overal but he didn't share that much of responsibility for the goals. He was very good again... being the only good defender or defender at all is not worth criticising. Please stop posting if you don't know what's going on. Thank you
With many average matches in between them yeah. Smalling is a good player but not the best defender in the league.
fecking hell, could you be anymore up your own arse
Agree with this completely, I thought Schneidelin was average against Wolfsburg but today was the type of game he was signed for.
Yep. Felt as sorry for him today as I did De Gea in the Moyes season. So badly let down by everyone around him.
I wholeheartedly agree.
He's got a quite a few scalps this season. Clean sheets against Kane, Lukaku and Bony. Had Benteke in his backpocket all game against Liverpool as well until his freak overhead.
Is it too outrageous to say he's the best outfield player at the club? I think he's better in his position than anyone else at the club except obviously De Gea. Shaw would be in the running too the way he started the season.
Is it too outrageous to say he's the best outfield player at the club? I think he's better in his position than anyone else at the club except obviously De Gea. Shaw would be in the running too the way he started the season.
Yes!
Rooney said he was one of the Top 3 Center Backs in the World.
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/...ng-to-manchester-united-captain-a6710016.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/...ng-to-manchester-united-captain-a6710016.html
Yep, him and Shaw. Probably we'd already consider Martial competition if LVG hadn't pushed him out of position to play the oh-so-effective Rooney.
He is very good and could possibly develop into a world class defender in a short time. It's amazing really that we bought him on the back of a handful games for Fulham (3 games?) and his previous club was an amateur side. He was playing non-league football at 19 when we were in CL final and probably never imagined he would be here in 2015.
It shows how good the scouts really are. Both of us and Arsenal were onto him as soon as he hit the pitch for Fulham and did everything we could to get him asap. £12m we paid was a fair bit of money back then.
Its impressive we got him over Arsenal as he turned down Middleborough (PL club back then) for Maidstone just to stay closer to home. I read Fergie personally called his mother to convince him to move.
19 games - but still its a relatively small number for what was at the time quite a hefty fee
Starting to fulfil the potential - hopefully Jones can stay injury free and we can get a settled partnership for a while
We signed him in January. A lot of his games for Fulham came after we signed him.
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