[RedEarth]

2-0 up at HT was some kind of sick joke. A laughable scoreline on how it had gone.

Thankfully in our favour.

 

[Marwood]

No I watched the 2nd half and we gave up any chance of scoring and just waited for Brentford to eventually score as we defend our own box for the entire half.

Did we defend better in the 2nd half? Did Brentford get as many chances as they did first half?

 

[Dominos]

Really disagree with this. The issue was getting out of our half while defending in the first half. It was very clear the Brentford was committing 6 while pressing up high. Adding a CB and going to a 3-4-3 means you have ample options when playing out of the back, 6v7. The issue is it leaves Bruno isolated as a winger. Ultimately, it’s the right call as it limits the number of chances from turnovers in the build up. They hit a very impressive strike from distance to pull one back, but compared to the first half, the chances were very limited.

Not trying to be an asshole here, but understanding the tactical changes is imperative to how Carrick managed this match. He knew Brentford would commit men forward and placed Bruno in a position where he could spring transition goals or set pieces in the first half. This came at the expense of giving up chances. In the second half, up 2-0, he consolidated, going to a back 3, creating a 7v6 situation and allowing triangles and 3v2s to further control.

Their only goal was a great strike from 23 yards. I see this as a vindication of Carrick rather than an example of his tactical naivety.

I don't think it was naive I think it was overly negative.

The point being simply

1. We should be able to defend better than we did using a back 4. We cannot be changing to a back 5 every time a team is looking dangerous against us, not least a midtable side when we're at home. If we can't find a way to defend better without parking the bus and giving up any chance of scoring, we're in deep trouble going forward.

2. The tactical shift basically guarantees we lose the 2nd half. It's just a matter of whether Brentford only get 1, or they sneak another as we hang on for dear life. Every time we try this shut up shop approach for long periods we always concede, and then our fans pretend it's unlucky even though it happens every time.

3. We're still favourites to win the 2nd half in a back 4 as we'll have an unbelievable amount of space to counter attack into and we can continue the huge attacking threat we had in the first half.

 

[Hoof the ball]

I long for the day when we can dominate teams and suffocate them with the ball.

 

[Jeffthered]

We will take that... a good win against a very good side. Brentford are an example to many clubs, including ours, as to how to build a competitve squad, by good scouting and recruitment, and sound management. I hope we can learn from this, and this is why I have no time for all these super-player recruitment people like Wilcox. We don't need him. You couldn't name the people who scout for Villa, Brentford, Brighton, Bournemouth... yet look at their players, their squads. Brentford could have scored a few tonight, but we will take that.

However, we started very well, and this was Kobie Mainoos best game for what I can remember. He was at times, excellent, but generally, he battled well, and that's enough. He put in a shift, and in the first 15, helped take the game to them. However, Casimero, Maguire, Bruno, Shaw, Lammens... these players have been sensational under Carrick, and they were, once again, key for us. They set our standards. I'm pleased for Sesko, it will be interesting how he develops.

Mbuma, Amad look 'off it..' and maybe they need the season to end. But that's a worry.. they both seem sloppy. Dalot too. All have dropped off, and I don't like that and we should not accept it. Carrick needs to be prepared to show SAF instinct here, don't mess with players. If they don't fancy it or step up, then bye-bye.

I don't see what Mason Mount or Joshua Zirkzee are doing anymore.

 

[Adnan]

I think Carrick is doing whatever is required with the tools at his disposal. Not a good performance but the main thing right now is getting the results and qualifying for the Champions league.

I thought Brentford's Danish player Damsgaard looked very good and had a huge influence as far as how they played. He was my MOTM.

 

[AndyMUFC]

Job done. Started great and dropped off after the first goal, were lucky not to concede but remained a threat on the break and got the second. Most of the second half was a non event really, it was probably a bit too comfortable until they scored.

I want to see better football. I also think we need better players to do it successfully so do now Carrick is doing a great job with what he has.

 

[r0663664]

We won, that's the most important thing. If we beat Liverpool, we are almost definitely finish 3rd. What worries me is our ability to hold on to the ball! When we are under pressure, nobody has the calmness to pass the ball properly. I always see Dalot playing like a headless chicken and losing balls in the finish 3rd. I don't know what we do in training, how can we not improve this aspect of the game? All top teams have the ability to control the games. We are very far away from a top team. We need a ball playing along Mainoo, we need to find a better RB. Hope Ineos finds these players else we won't finish in top 4.

 

[Woziak]

Carrick ball has highs, mids and lows but he also has 29 points from 13 PL matches at 2.29 points per game.

If you multiply 2.29 you finish with 85 points which is the number which wins the EPL this season and yet most united fans are honest enough to know this type of football is simply not sustainable.

When the team is already struggling with the intensity from other PL’s teams when this squad will only play 40 matches is incredibly worrying.

Does Michael deserve a chance, maybe a 12-24 month extension, does he at least deserve the opportunity to be given 6 or 7 new players in the summer to fix the midfield, fix the full back and go get a genuine elite wide player that can make all the difference.

Ugarte, Zirkzee, Bayinder Malacia and Casemiro will all leave. That means we need five to replace them plus at least one more midfielder and an elite/Rapid left winger to truly offer a threat down the left wing.

We need seven new players just to cope with the 50-60 matches we will play next season.

 

[A-man]

We don’t have a full time manager and have had a disaster of a season. Just about getting over the line at this point.

Not sure why some of you are expecting prime Brazil.

There is a large territory between prime Brazil and being outplayed by Brentford.

 

[Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber]

Second game running too passive at home.

 

[Blood Mage]

struggling to understand the praise for Casemiro & Mainoo. We got over ran for the majority of the game.

Thought the back 5 switch was bizarre too.

They were constantly exploiting Dalot's poor positioning on the flank, and Shaw was switching off too often on the other, which was dragging us all over the place and creating space for their central players. With better full-backs I think we would have been more comfortable.

 

[moodyred]

How many times have I watched the top teams play and thought the wins weren't deserving? Matter is, they won.

How many times we slipped in recent seasons when it mattered? We just couldn't get across the line.

How many thought it is just a new manager bounce and a matter of playing the right players in the right position? Tottenham and Chelsea certainly can't achieve that.

The lads played their hearts out under the leadership of Michael Carrick. Some of our attacks were one touch exciting stuff and we were clinical with the two finishes. Rode our luck abit but I thought we would have fought back should we draw or go behind. We are capable of that. What matters is, we won and we are sitting firmly in CL qualification. Viva United!

 

[Denis' cuff]

Unreal, people on here. Look at every season with ETH and Ruben, then contrast it with what Carrick has brought to the team. Even if only in terms of points but that doesn’t matter, of course. The hand Carrick was dealt was a poisoned chalice if ever there was one but he has guided us to 3rd which would’ve been laughed at had anyone suggested it. Any boneheaded can see we haven’t got the players or the bodies to press, or dominate, so we choose to defend. We all know it isn’t ideal but neither is our squad.

 

[Denis' cuff]

2-0 up at HT was some kind of sick joke. A laughable scoreline on how it had gone.

Thankfully in our favour.

If you think being 2-0 up is a sick joke, maybe find another sport or definitely another club. Contrast that attitude to those in the stadium. That, is a sick joke.

 

[Tincanalley]

In this instance, I have a lot of sympathy for people being critical. But I’m delighted with the outcome. It’s scary our reliance on Harry, Case and Bruno. But we’ll take this, move on. Next season is (spiritually) a long way off

 

[croadyman]

Pleased with the win, however lucky we caught Thiago having an off night. Buzzing Bruno moves up to joint 2nd on the PL assists in a season. Didn't feel like we created anything in second half but at least we stopped their attacks through the middle

 

[The Red Thinker]

I’m sorry. It’s performances like these that make me believe Carrick is not the man.

We always take our foot off the gas in these sort of games and basically made Brentford look like some prime Barca in phases.

Our manager cannot be a man whose ideas switch from dominating City at home to look mid table va Brentford at home. Exacting standards in training are not visible. What worries me is that we have so much more in us to play a more aggressive, front foot game and yet… that was poor.

 

[Denis' cuff]

Carrick ball has highs, mids and lows but he also has 29 points from 13 PL matches at 2.29 points per game.

If you multiply 2.29 you finish with 85 points which is the number which wins the EPL this season and yet most united fans are honest enough to know this type of football is simply not sustainable.

When the team is already struggling with the intensity from other PL’s teams when this squad will only play 40 matches is incredibly worrying.

Does Michael deserve a chance, maybe a 12-24 month extension, does he at least deserve the opportunity to be given 6 or 7 new players in the summer to fix the midfield, fix the full back and go get a genuine elite wide player that can make all the difference.

Ugarte, Zirkzee, Bayinder Malacia and Casemiro will all leave. That means we need five to replace them plus at least one more midfielder and an elite/Rapid left winger to truly offer a threat down the left wing.

We need seven new players just to cope with the 50-60 matches we will play next season.

Problem is, most of those teams play with that intensity, what, maybe 6x per season - we have to match it 90% of the time. The downside of being Manchester United.

 

[Jippy]

If you think being 2-0 up is a sick joke, maybe find another sport or definitely another club. Contrast that attitude to those in the stadium. That, is a sick joke.

Don't start that crap.

 

[Nyland]

I think we played quite well, but that seems to be just me.

Some of the reaction seems over the top. I don't understand how anyone can profess to understand that this isn't 1994 any more and yet will rage unless we're absolutely thrashing every team that comes here. I don't understand what some people have been watching this past decade. Sometimes it genuinely is as if we have a fanbase that have been binge-watching recaps of the Treble season for the last 25 years and assumed that nothing much would have changed.

We beat a decent team. Yes they had chances, so did we. Not so long ago we would be lucky to see more one or two chances in a match. We go from pre-match gloom because we've not won a Monday night game since Harold McMillian was Prime Minister - or something - to bleating about how we're not thrashing a team challenging for Europe by 16 goals, or whatever we're not deciding the expectation was.

Entertaining, open game. Three points.

 

[lex talionis]

The bedwetters were out in force again on the matchday thread. There was no chance we were going to thrash a very good Brentford side. We already this squad has holes. We were missing our starting two CBs. We missed Cunha. And Mbeumo has been badly out of form for three months now.

Yet we won, and not because of poor refereeing. Lammens had to make some great saves, but great saves are as much as part of football as great goals scored.

Job extremely well done.

 

[Hester_manc]

Mathias Jensen scored an excellent goal for Brentford, but Dalot ducking to avoid getting hit by the shot is just so typical Dalot - that was actually I first thing I was thinking when I saw the goal again.

 

[Cantona in disguise]

They were constantly exploiting Dalot's poor positioning on the flank, and Shaw was switching off too often on the other, which was dragging us all over the place and creating space for their central players. With better full-backs I think we would have been more comfortable.

Yeah not sure how you could watch that game and not appreciate how good they both were.

 

[Zico1982]

Casemiro and Lammens were brilliant
Bruno and Kobbie and Harry were good
Sesko was clinical when he got the chance

Our MotM was Tiago though. WtF was he doing? He should have scored at least three and probably four on the day.

Kudos to Brentford, especially to Damsgaard and Jensen. They cut through us like butter.

 

[Glorio]

I reckon Afcon has forced a false second season syndrome on Mbeumo. Looks miles off it - there are things he was never great at for us (duels, tackles, blinding pace for instance), so when his touch and scoring deserts him, combined with a wider starting position (which doesn't suit him), he just seems to make zero impact.

Amad looks well off it as well, but he can at least dribble past his marker from time to time and is monster in the press.

 

[Borys]

Interesting that all of Casemiro, Mainoo and Bruno are getting good reviews, and yet our midfield got dominated almost the entire game. I do think both things are true (they did play well and we did get dominated), just an interesting situation.

 

[Infra-red]

It's a massive win and we're now right on the cusp of UCL. Honestly, I couldn't care less about performances at the moment - just take me to June.

 

[steeeb]

Im surprised a lot of you would prefer to dominate a loss at OT than win 2-1.

It wasn't pretty but we got the points.

He should come out and say the team isnt good enough and to say CL is miles away and get the team to down tools instead until he's given a CL winning squad, then we can qualify.

Or.. just do what he can with the tools provided to get the points.

 

[Alemar]

2-0 up at HT was some kind of sick joke. A laughable scoreline on how it had gone.

Thankfully in our favour.

We could have easily scored 4 in the first half, with Amad unable to hit the empty net from 6 yards and Maguire header lacking 5 cm to fully cross the line

 

[Alemar]

Interesting that all of Casemiro, Mainoo and Bruno are getting good reviews, and yet our midfield got dominated almost the entire game.

That’s due to poor defensive work down both flanks mainly

 

[Robertd0803]

Big sigh of relief with that one. Brentford were never going to be an easy game (is there such a thing anymore?) so take the result at this stage of the season and move on.

 

[Ludens the Red]

Interesting that all of Casemiro, Mainoo and Bruno are getting good reviews, and yet our midfield got dominated almost the entire game. I do think both things are true (they did play well and we did get dominated), just an interesting situation.

I think it says any overall midfield performance is as good as the set up of the team. I also think the profile we have of player in there isn’t necessarily at its best if recycling possession.

Anyway yeah, big problem last night was lack of compactness. Amad, Mbeumo and Sesko were too disjointed. That coupled with the elephant in the room, in that when Maguire plays our defence gets deeper.

Deeper our defensive line gets, the deeper our midfield gets. But Mbeumo, Amad and Sesko didn’t get deeper so there was just way too much space in front of our midfield. The press wasn’t effective after our goal either.

It was the same under Amorim and just like under Amorim, Casemiro and Bruno individually were still two of the top performers but the overall midfield looked shit because the tactical set up of the team wasn’t good.

Again, last night Bruno, Casemiro and Mainoo are doing too much. I thought our front three were awful off the ball to be honest. Amad and Mbeumo were way too wide for no reason at times. We are every fortunate in that that trio of midfielders we have are so confident and comfortable when they do get the ball because if they weren’t we’d be in serious trouble.

 

[BorisManUtd]

Watched with friend and at some point in first half told me this would end like 5-5

First half was good attacking wise, though defensively suspect. Second half they were better and while bringing defender instead of Amad perhaps made us more firm at the back, it also set the tone for how we'd play. Big three points, performance wasn't ideal but that's been the case for some time.

Casemiro will get a great send off vs Forest no doubt.

 

[rio's upper lip]

Some absolutely amazing performances from quite a few of our players today (Mainoo, Casemiro, Lammens, Bruno), but the team as a whole seemed disjointed and lacked quality in all areas. It’s like the shit performances outweighed the good ones. Weird.

 

[Wolfbot]

First 15mins Fergie, rest of the first half Ole. Second half was Jose with a two goal lead.

Meh overall but very important points.

At least we're changing it up I suppose. My main issue under Amorim is there wasn't any change no matter what was happening on the pitch aside from stick Maguire up for the last 10 if losing.

 

[Woziak]

Problem is, most of those teams play with that intensity, what, maybe 6x per season - we have to match it 90% of the time. The downside of being Manchester United.

Yes but under the new squad ratio rules, United in CL should easily turn over £750m
Even 70% of that to meet UEFA Squad ratio rule gives United huge advantages over teams like Brentford, Bournemouth, Burnley, Palace, Wolves, West Ham and Leeds.

We managed 22 points from a potential 42 from those 7 teams. That’s not good enough and most of it was on Amorim’s watch!

To win you have to get 80% points against these teams, Bournemouth will either be in Europe or learning under a new coach United must get 6 points next season against them and at least 4 against Leeds and Brentford!

 

[Woziak]

It’s weird how some pundits say we could have been 1-3 down at half time, we scored two, Amad missed a sitter and Harry had a goal denied by one of the saves of the season, they never really had great contact in our box, maybe it could have been 5-2 at half time to us!

 

[Wolfbot]

Great result, poor performance. Tgat coukd be a summary of most games under Carrick.

Just dont think this is sustainable, and on another day Brentford could have run out comfortable winners. The issues are the same, we dont have control of game because we cannot control the game with possession. I het that this is partly due to instructions with fast breaks and turnovers but im afraid this sort of play, in modern football, will not win you titles or cups. Take Bruno out of this team, and also Cas, and we are very ordinary and that worries me greatly.

That's exactly right, and it's something that is very much overlooked around here. We're very much an average Premier League team with a handful of top quality players, yet people are expecting us to be dominating games and playing shit hot football after we had to sack a manager mid season because both performances and results were pretty poor. We aren't near being the team that many think we should be, I'm just enjoying seeing us winning quite a few games for the first time in ages

 

[Borys]

I think it says any overall midfield performance is as good as the set up of the team. I also think the profile we have of player in there isn’t necessarily at its best if recycling possession.

Anyway yeah, big problem last night was lack of compactness. Amad, Mbeumo and Sesko were too disjointed. That coupled with the elephant in the room, in that when Maguire plays our defence gets deeper.

Deeper our defensive line gets, the deeper our midfield gets. But Mbeumo, Amad and Sesko didn’t get deeper so there was just way too much space in front of our midfield. The press wasn’t effective after our goal either.

It was the same under Amorim and just like under Amorim, Casemiro and Bruno individually were still two of the top performers but the overall midfield looked shit because the tactical set up of the team wasn’t good.

Again, last night Bruno, Casemiro and Mainoo are doing too much. I thought our front three were awful off the ball to be honest. Amad and Mbeumo were way too wide for no reason at times. We are every fortunate in that that trio of midfielders we have are so confident and comfortable when they do get the ball because if they weren’t we’d be in serious trouble.

Yes I thought out defensive structure was completely off, with Sesko and Bruno pushing high and Amad and Mbuemo very wide.

I think we don't have a clear, cohesive plan how to defend. We try to push high with the attackers, but midfield and defence stays in mid block. We actually never really get the ball back with high pressing so we might as well stay compact in mid block.

Funny thing is, once the initial pressure is bypassed, we back off into the deep block and defend the box. I'm tempted to say we would need another midfielder to make up for Casemiro lack of legs, because the distances between out players in central areas SEEM huge.