Making Old Trafford a fortress again

Bojan11

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Ole has improved a lot of things.

But our performances at home under him aside from perhaps Bournemouth have been average. We had spells against Brighton and Huddersfield. But nothing really amazing.

If we wanna be challenging for the league we need to be more ruthless in swatting these teams aside. That’s what the best teams do and it allows them to rest their players later on in the game.

At the moment we not getting the best out of the pitch. We too slow in moving the ball. Our fullbacks need to improve their crossing. We just play way too slow at Old Trafford.

Another thing was the lack of noise from the fans tonight. You would have thought it was a Burnley home game.
 

Adam-Utd

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We need to play a different style against teams that park the bus. Having wide men that cut inside regularly just plugs even more gaps.

We need at least 1 winger to hang wide and attack the fullback. Our fullbacks also never do overlapping runs as generally they’re the ones holding the width.

That’s fine if you’ve got prime Maicon or Dani Alves but we don’t. We should be using teamwork and double teams to get in behind.

We’ve suffered like this for years since we stopped our wingplay and tried to be more possession based.
 

arthurka

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We need to play a different style against teams that park the bus. Having wide men that cut inside regularly just plugs even more gaps.

We need at least 1 winger to hang wide and attack the fullback. Our fullbacks also never do overlapping runs as generally they’re the ones holding the width.

That’s fine if you’ve got prime Maicon or Dani Alves but we don’t. We should be using teamwork and double teams to get in behind.

We’ve suffered like this for years since we stopped our wingplay and tried to be more possession based.
Having fullbacks that can cross would help.. Ours are absolutely horrible with their crossing.
 

minoo-utd

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This system is working, but we need few additions to it, I'll start with signing 2 full backs. And it's good to go and attack teams whoever we play at O.T. but if Ole will get the job he needs at least 3 4 players to execute his ideas week in week out.
 

Sylar

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Quality in depth for rotation
And quality for starting line up on the right
Two issues that need to be addressed

Oh and our defence but that's not just for home games haha
 

Adam-Utd

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Having fullbacks that can cross would help.. Ours are absolutely horrible with their crossing.
Well yeah, shaw doesn’t even run when he crosses he just stands there. Young at least tries but I think he hit 1 out of 20 tonight.
 

Minimalist

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Don’t know what the exact answer is but it is a major problem. Frankly I think most of the blame lies on Mourinho who made it piss easy for teams to play against us (or kept it going after Van Gaal, whatever your opinion is, though I don’t his style brought this on).

Dropping points in 5 home matches out of 12 is a pretty shite for a club that spends tons of money and has a big reputation. It’s barely better than our away ratio (7W|4D|1L vs 6W|2D|4L).

Even Arsenal are doing better in this regard despite all the complaints.
 

crossy1686

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Not sure I agree with this. Our fear factor is back, you can see that by the way teams now set up, they're coming to frustrate and try and nick something. You have to remember that it's been about 6 years since this team had to play against anyone who did that against us so there's going to be a natural transition while we learn the best way to break these teams down to get a win, being clinical is probably the most important factor.

We also need some more players who are more creative in the final 3rd or at the very least, our big name expensive additions need to do a lot better against these teams.
 

Green_Red

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Where were you sat?
I was at the Bournemouth game and it was an electric atmosphere. The Brighton home game was decent too. Compared to the games I went where Jose was still there it has improved massively, so I don't understand the ops comment either.
 

Bojan11

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I know it was PSG. But we just look clueless at home on how to break teams down compared to away from home.
 

Frank Grimes

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Our performances in Old Trafford this season have been very disappointing. Why is this? Struggling to think of any that were good to be honest. 1 goal in 4 home CL games this season, that's poverty.
 

Giggs86

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Our performances in Old Trafford this season have been very disappointing. Why is this? Struggling to think of any that were good to be honest. 1 goal in 4 home CL games this season, that's poverty.
Players need to work on their mentality as individuals and as a team. Currently we are too weak and we crumble under the pressure at home in front of 75,000 people who have high hopes every game. It's not surprising our best performances were away from home where the expectations were much lower.
 

Eddy_JukeZ

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Our performances in general have been trending down a bit.

I don't know if it's fatigue related or just something else entirely.

But yeah, we just don't turn it up at OT anymore. Teams are too comfortable here.
 

Bojan11

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One goal in five champions league games. Fair enough we played Juve, Barca and PSG in three of them. But let’s be honest we could have played all day in all of them and not scored.

We can add the Watform performance as another poor home performance. We got a bit lucky vs Southampton. This is one thing Ole needs to improve for next season because I don’t get how we look worse at home. The atmosphere yesterday sounded electric so that excuse can’t be used.
 

Samid

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One home goal all season in CL, a scrappy one in added time vs the mighty Young Boys. Meanwhile the dippers go and score 4x as many in one night vs Barcelona despite missing three of their best players.

No one fears Old Trafford anymore, and quite frankly why should they when our players don't give the opposition any reason to be fearful?
 

Drz

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Teams are happy to let us have the ball, because we are not coherent and incisive when we try to play possession football. So they tactics when we play at home for the average team is pretty simple, let us have the ball and wait till we cough it up because of how slow we pass or random cluelessness born out of exasperation.
It doesn't look like we have worked on a system that has us scoring whilst dominating the ball over these past 2 years.
Then there is the team factor, it looks like their all out just for themselves, they seem clueless to how their team-mates play.
 

VeevaVee

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We need to get scoring goals with better quality possession and attacking. That alone will quieten teams. Then we can solidify as needed.
 

youmeletsfly

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We need cannons outside OT, and some infantry.
Other than that we'd need about 12 players.
 

R'hllor

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We dont have performances to actually scare anyone, we had results in the past at home but seems that never transformed into fear.
 

TMDaines

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Interesting stat:

United have lost 0-2 at Old Trafford three times under Solskjaer. In the rest of the Premier League era, in all competitions, under Sir Alex, Moyes, Giggs, Van Gaal and Mourinho, United only lost 0-2 at Old Trafford twice.
 

Massive Spanner

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Interesting stat:

United have lost 0-2 at Old Trafford three times under Solskjaer. In the rest of the Premier League era, in all competitions, under Sir Alex, Moyes, Giggs, Van Gaal and Mourinho, United only lost 0-2 at Old Trafford twice.
I saw that stat and it's kinda interesting but a bit pointless and misleading. We lost plenty of games by two, three, even four goals at OT under those managers.
 

TMDaines

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I saw that stat and it's kinda interesting but a bit pointless and misleading. We lost plenty of games by two, three, even four goals at OT under those managers.
Hah! Did someone else dig that out to? I just spent five minutes researching it, as I couldn't remember another time we had lost 0-2 at home apart from against Coventry.
 

GaryLifo

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I look forward to the day - no matter when it is - that I can start ticking off the names of all the teams who are owed a fecking massive thrashing at the hands of United.

The list of teams who have swanned into Old Trafford and been allowed to take the piss is long enough to fill a toilet roll.

When we finally have a team that is feared again, I shall take extra delight at sticking 4 and 5 past the likes of Wolves, Southampton, Everton, Cardiff, Huddersfield, Brighton etc etc

feck me we've been bad for a long time.
 

roonster09

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Interesting stat:

United have lost 0-2 at Old Trafford three times under Solskjaer. In the rest of the Premier League era, in all competitions, under Sir Alex, Moyes, Giggs, Van Gaal and Mourinho, United only lost 0-2 at Old Trafford twice.
It's not interesting, it's pointless. We lost more than 2 goals but the stat is about specific scoreline.
 

TrueRed1999

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I think there is alot of things we can do. As a current season ticket holder it is frustrating seeing not only how far we have fallen but even knowing some solutions that are obvious when the board cannot.

1. Bring in a Director of Football - ASAP
2. Remove Ed from Football Side of Things -ASAP
3. Stop buying named players for the sake of it
4. Build the Team like a House from the Foundations - Defence First
5. Get Rid of the Deadwood
6. Integrate the likes of Greenwood, Tuanzabe, Gomes, Chong, Garner in the next squad

These are the 6 things that would be a start for me in rebuilding Old Trafford as a Fortress
 
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TMDaines

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It's not interesting, it's pointless. We lost more than 2 goals but the stat is about specific scoreline.
United losing by multiple goals to nil at home: it has already happened to Solskjaer three times in six months. In the rest of the Premier League era, in all competitions, under Sir Alex, Moyes, Giggs, Van Gaal and Mourinho, United only lost by multiple goals to nil at Old Trafford eight times in over 26 years.
 

roonster09

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United losing by multiple goals to nil at home: it has already happened to Solskjaer three times in six months. In the rest of the Premier League era, in all competitions, under Sir Alex, Moyes, Giggs, Van Gaal and Mourinho, United only lost by multiple goals to nil at Old Trafford eight times in over 26 years.
This is what I'm saying, why does it matter whether we lose 2-0 at home or 3-1, 4-1 at home?
 

TMDaines

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This is what I'm saying, why does it matter whether we lose 2-0 at home or 3-1, 4-1 at home?
I think losing by multiple goals to nil is interesting, because failing to score at home is obviously very much unintended. Every top side wants and expects to win every home game, regardless of the opposition. No top side is ever happy to leave the field without having scored, bar some weird circumstance where 0-0 is an acceptable result. Conceding multiple goals and losing by more than just the one goal demonstrates that you've not just lost a match, but a side has won fairly comfortably. The referee could commit a howler late on and you've still got a cushion. It's why what City and Liverpool are doing is so impressive. They are not just winning matches, but doing so in a way where they have such a large margin of error.

For me the feeling as a match going fan is a weird one, because I cannot relate to a time like the last six months where so many teams have won comfortably at Old Trafford. It's becoming regular that the other side is scoring one or more goals from multiple mistakes, or just being superior, and we're blanking. We've gone from people turning up at Old Trafford, keeping a clean sheet and winning by multiple goals from being a once-every-few-seasons type event to once every few weeks.