Its just him unable to deal with the pressure at United. He insisted on a 442 for half a season even though it wasnt working so he bowed to a 4231 but doesn't know how to deploy it properly and more to the point to change it when things are going bad.
If you gave an investor £50 million to make you more money, but he blows it all away, do you go "ah you didn't do too bad, I'll give you another £200 million to try again"? Not in the real world you don't.
Absolutely.
442?, really? doesnt look like 442 to me
We have 3 players who look like they are playing up top. Our right side has no width and on the left Evra is getting out numbered. Surely packing the midfield would help solve that issue instead of having our midfield 2 get triangles played around them. Add to that no one is taking up a position to play the short ball, its all go out wide or try a crossfield/long ball
You make it sound like playing 4231 is an incredibly complex setup that requires some kind of tactical mastermind to employ properly. He played that at Everton. It's not a particularly sophisticated setup. It's just that our two best players like to play close to the goal and right up top and our team is used to funnelling it out wide as often as possible. It's a team thing not a manager thing.
On paper this team is far better with the addition of Mata and even Fellaini.
How? Look at our set up when they get the ball. As flat of a 4-4-2 as you can get.
Really? He's playing a very flat 442 and we are getting murdered in midfield as a result
The noise coming out of the club is that he'll be there this summer and will be handed a lot of money to spend. Maybe the results in the next few weeks will cause him to be sacked, but as it stands, he'll still be the manager next season.
The lack of pace is one of our biggest problems. It is the reason why I don't think we can stick with Rooney or RVP long term. Out of the two u top, at least one player needs to have the pace to either get behind the defense or run at defenders.
This is the issue, in an absolute nutshell. And that is the managers fault.
I'm not going to keep entertaining the idea of him sacking, as I feel he will be immune to any form of sacking no matter how we end this season now. But AVB got sacked for investing half of what we plan on doing, when Tottenham were in fact above us. We need to get out of this fecking bubble we have ourselves in and see how lost we are right now.
I genuinely don't think it will make a difference who he signs. He just doesn't know what to do.
I've been saying that for a few months now, if he buys bad in the summer we are done for. I'm not talking about bad players, I'm talking about players to fit his terrible style.
I think a problem is that I don't see any identifiable formation.
What you've said contradicts itself all over the show. Evra is getting outnumbered and we've no width on the right, but no-one is taking up a position to play the short ball, no-one is packing the midfield and it's all about going out wide? That doesn't really add up. Mata has come in to play the short ball consistently, hence why there's no-one out wide. There's been some decent build-up play with him and Rooney dropping into the hole and outnumbering Gerrard, with their other two centre mids pulling out wide and Sterling not really contributing much off the ball. The fact Mata is coming inside and linking up with Rooney is evidence of it being a 4231 rather than this rigid 442 that everyone tries to convince themselves is being played when we're not winning. People criticise playing the 442, but then mention Mata never being in the wide position...something doesn't quite add up there.
No it doesnt, Januaji is playing so far forward on the left hes got Henderson and Sterling exploiting the space behind him, result? Evra is out numbered. On the right we only have Rafael providing the width so when hes not there we look bare on that side. Rooney isn't dropping deep enough to collect the ball from midfield so the only option they have is to look wide and try and play Rafael or Evra forward to join the play. As for Mata he's been the deeper of the two but when he comes back Felliani decides its his job to bomb forward.
This is how I've seen the game as well.
