[royboy16]

Good result,we were lucky not to concede.

 

[AlecHDR]

Zlatan should be here next season.

That is all.

 

[sunama]

Good performance. The final third problem is still somewhat there. We need to convert more of our chances in the box.

The work that Rashford did for the 2nd goal is something we see every week from umpteen players. We get the ball into the penalty area and fire the ball towards (or across) the goal mouth.
The problem is tapping the ball in. Today, we scored a rare tap-in, so maybe, we are heading in the right direction.

It is interesting that so many people don't want Ibra to play, yet he is the one who is actually scoring the goals.
Spurs wouldn't bench Kane.
Everton wouldn't bench Lukaku.
So why do our fans want Ibra benched?

 

[kouroux]

The work that Rashford did for the 2nd goal is something we see every week from umpteen players. We get the ball into the penalty area and fire the ball towards (or across) the goal mouth.
The problem is tapping the ball in. Today, we scored a rare tap-in, so maybe, we are heading in the right direction.

It is interesting that so many people don't want Ibra to play, yet he is the one who is actually scoring the goals.
Spurs wouldn't bench Kane.
Everton wouldn't bench Lukaku.
So why do our fans want Ibra benched?

Our fans can be weirdos, no other explanations

 

[Ban]

 

[Android1974]

We allowed 14 shots at home (although not one on target), I think that tells a lot about our performance.

 

[Adam-Utd]

Pretty horrible first half which stemmed from fellaini looking like a competition winner who was completely lost.

Once we got some more energy and pacd into the team we looked so much better. They ran their socks off early on and their forward was giving our defence nightmares, but guess he gassed early.

Pogba my MOTM with Ibra and Martial close

 

[SCP]

Just 2 points, the difference was the individual quality of the players and taking Fellaini out of the team.

I know Mou likes him but he doesn't add nothing to this team, he might be a nice person but...

 

[Irrational.]

Any reaction from Jose?

 

[Cliche Guevara]

We allowed 14 shots at home (although not one on target), I think that tells a lot about our performance.

I don't know. I think a lot must have been early in the match. They started quite forcefully and made a real game of it, but I was always hopeful they'd tire and we'd finish strongly. I think that's how it transpired in the end.

 

[Raw]

Any reaction from Jose?

Saw this tweet:

Jose critical of MUFC 1st half concentration levels: "The dressing room too noisy beforehand, too funny, too relaxed. I'm not happy with it"

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

 

[ColvaleGoa]

Hmmm, I'm gonna have to hear from Dr. Machnik one last time before deciding how I feel about that one.

Where did he come from?? Never seen or heard from him before...??

 

[leontas]

Could've scored more but also could've conceded more so no complaints.

Rode our luck in the first half and made too many unforced mistakes. Fellaini has no place in this team.

 

[Raw]

 

[ivaldo]

We were great but saying we got lucky is a bit much. Yes they had some missed opportunities but so did we, they didn't even manage a shot on target.

Deserved win albeit on the back of an erratic performance.

 

[Alexrad]

For the second leg I'd love to see a front three of Martial-Rashford-Mkhitaryan, would give us immense pace on the counter.

We are going to have so many games to play in the next 3 months and we have a chance to rest key players in a tie that is already basically over (and Cup final is 3 days later!) but...you want to play Mkhi and Martial in it? Why on earth...? Your nick is Irrational but come on...

 

[kouroux]

It is a great result, bad first half, much better second half.

 

[#07]

How do we miss so many chances?? We won 3-0 despite how wasteful we were. A strong start descended into real sloppiness after we scored. Glad we picked it up second half but had we taken our early chances we would not have needed to. Always making it tough on ourselves.

 

[Annihilate Now!]

Weird game really. We didn't play well at all, yet could have had about 6 or 7. Everyone had their crap moments, no one played exceptionally well, including Zlatan, and yet he scored a hattrick. At times we struggled with the very basic concepts of "passing" and "defending", and yet we won 3-0, so I'm very happy.

Their physio was definitely MOTM.

 

[giorno]

Jose critical of MUFC 1st half concentration levels: "The dressing room too noisy beforehand, too funny, too relaxed. I'm not happy with it"

I mean, it was Zlatan vs St Etienne. Everybody knew he was going to score at least a hat-trick

 

[NinjaZombie]

Hmmm, I'm gonna have to hear from Dr. Machnik one last time before deciding how I feel about that one.

Who the feck is that guy? Claiming Martial should've seen red for striking the opponent with his forearm, "regardless of whether he intended it or not" because the rule "does not take intent into account."

If I recall correctly, striking an opponent falls into Group 6 of Fouls And Misconduct where the referee has to take into consideration how the incident occurred.

*Edit*

http://www.thefa.com/football-rules.../football-11-11/law-12---fouls-and-misconduct

 

[kirk buttercup]

Pogba was great.
The rest was all over the shop but feck it we have dominated games and got a draw. So fantastic.

 

[TMDaines]

Good performance. Thought Zlatan, Martial and Valencia were all excellent. Good cameo from Rashford too. Still wasteful from open play, but that seems like a trait of this group of individuals and Zlatan in particular. I can somewhat accept wasteful, if the trade-off is having players and a team in general who would create more chances than you'd otherwise expect.

Rode our luck first half and a better side would have punished us. Bailly had his worst game for the club so far. St Etienne seemed a decent enough team, but lack quality individual brilliance.

I think we need to get a giant Pogba ticker on the forum that counts his shots since his last goal. Goes close often in fairness, but as we know, close is no cigar.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Anyone else impressed with Saint-Etienne? I thought they were excellent.

 

[bri2013]

The eyebrows are all wrong for me.
Definitely think he's Benzema's clone:

There's a bit of Fellaini in him too.

Yep, that elbow is a dead ringer for Fellaini!

 

[sammsky1]

Anyone else impressed with Saint-Etienne? I thought they were excellent.

first half must be like what its like watching us play: gazillion semi chances and no goals!

 

[sammsky1]

How do we miss so many chances?? We won 3-0 despite how wasteful we were. A strong start descended into real sloppiness after we scored. Glad we picked it up second half but had we taken our early chances we would not have needed to. Always making it tough on ourselves.

they had loads of semi chances in first half and should have led going into half time.

 

[Reynoldo]

Their physio was definitely MOTM.

Ha what was the story with that?
It's been discussed already I'm sure but I can't be arsed checking

 

[Irrational.]

We are going to have so many games to play in the next 3 months and we have a chance to rest key players in a tie that is already basically over (and Cup final is 3 days later!) but...you want to play Mkhi and Martial in it? Why on earth...? Your nick is Irrational but come on...

In the same vein you don't want to end up embarrassed. I know it's a 3-0 lead but it's still a European away tie, and we need to keep up the momentum going into the final. We saw today that St. Etienne can be a dangerous side and have only lost twice at home all season. We can take our foot off the gas once we get an away goal there.

 

[BaguetteBoy]

Scored from a free kick although very lucky and a penalty. Clean sheet some players rested not a bad night at all

 

[wolvored]

Good result - not great play.

Allows us to play weakened teams against both Blackburn and Saint Etienne in the return leg. Hopefully helps us out keeping players fresh.

Mourinho said Herrera apart he will play a strong team on Wednesday

 

[wolvored]

Everytime they cut to him he seemed seething that we were winning. Good Ol' Doc Joe.

He did think it was a penalty though!

 

[The Wanderer]

Just 2 points, the difference was the individual quality of the players and taking Fellaini out of the team.

I know Mou likes him but he doesn't add nothing to this team, he might be a nice person but...

does he like him ??
He may be moving !

 

[RuudTom83]

United are very very hard to beat these days, you just don't watch them thinking about defeat...you watch thinking 'how many chances will go begging tonight!?'

A few cup trophies an a 2nd finish would be a fantastic start for Jose's team.

 

[noodlehair]

- What is Fellaini's role when he plays? He seems to just run around like a confused lost dog. I doubt both Jose and LVG's instructions to him are constantly "just go out and do whatever you feel like, feck it"...so what is he doing? He seemed to spend part of the first half tonight trying to run in behind their defence and get on the end of balls over the top. We had Martial playing and Rashford and Lingard on the bench. We definitely didn't play Fellaini to get him to do this, so what IS he doing?

- We are infuriatingly determined not to score goals. Last season we spent large parts of games deliberately not trying to attack. This season, we attack all the time, but unless we have an open goal, you know we wont score, and even when we do, there's only an at best 50% chance we'll score. Our players seem adamant on faffing around or turning away from the goal, or scooping the ball over the bar, or aiming it at the goalkeeper, or deliberately picking the wrong pass. They'll do everything in their power not score. Half the time when they do it genuinely looks like it happened by accident.

- I've never seen a freekick go into the goal so slowly that I've had time to be furious at what a bad effort it was before realising it was going in

- Why did that one St Etienne player just watch it slowly roll past him and in? It was like that scene from Austin PPowers with the guy waiting for the golf buggy to run him over. Just clear the fecking ball!

- I reckon that ref has constant arguments with his officiating team where he refuses to accept that diving is actually a thing and they all try to convince him it is, but he never listens.

- Fogba

- What I really like to watch innstead of the game, is a clip of a set of fans with their back to the game, nnot watching it, so that I, like them, can not watch the game. Because that's wh people tune into football on TV...so they can not watch it. Thanks BT.

- If there was such thing as an Ian Darke chat-shite-o-metre...it would have exploded at around about the 5th minute. It was relentless. Just whe you thought he couldn't be wrong about anything else or say anything else stupid, AS the coverage is going back to the studio "Well it was the battle of the two Pogba's, and there's no doubt the winner of that was Zlatan Ibrahimovic"...what does this even mean?

- Good spell towards the end of the first half where literally all of our players decided to just feck football off and concentrate on pretending to be ice skating whilst drunk.

Second hallf as better but the first was awful so that wasn't hard. We seemed shocked at St Etienne's ability and audacity to actually kick the football about, despite them being a football team.

 

[wolvored]

Good result, some good performances but I still feel we should play a lot better as a team.

St. Etienne lacked a bit of quality. We could have easily lost this match.

Oh and without Zlatan we would be fecked, he is simply great.

Yes but we would have another top striker up there so maybe not

 

[Cassidy]

Yes but we would have another top striker up there so maybe not

Who?

 

[Bastian]

Undeserved as we played woefully but Martial did well and Zlatan's experience won us the game.

Think the Pogbas sideshow maybe didn't help. Two or three occasions where our players should have gone in hard on him and they didn't, maybe out of some moral respect.

But 3-0, a great result given they were the better side for few passages of the game.

 

[Frank Grimes]

Thought Pogba was motm(just from Martial) but he really should have scored from that header. No excuse for missing that.
Very flattering scoreline and we got the breaks with the refs decisions tonight but nice to get a bit of luck.

 

[wolvored]

Who?

If we hadnt of signed Ibra Jose would of bought someone in as he wouldnt of gone with no experienced striker. Who is another matter. Whoever he would of had in mind.

 

[The Stain]

Hmmm, I'm gonna have to hear from Dr. Machnik one last time before deciding how I feel about that one.