[Litch]

I’m sure Ole didn’t want to go with that side as an ideal but he’s the guy who sees who has and hasn’t trained in the week. The selection was forced on him. The performance is another matter though.

There was a stronger side sat on the bench. I'm no coach but why not start will the best team, be winning the game and then make changes? If they are strong enough to be on the bench, they are strong enough to play. If TMF got injured in the first minute, is Ole gonna say can't put Wan on, he's not fit enough?

 

[Lam]

Lindelof, TFM and James are players who shouldn’t start for Man Utd. Why is it difficult for the club to figure this out?

We need a CB and one top quality attacker immediately to not finish outside the top 4.

Disappointing to see a bunch of losers running the club.

No ambition. No audacity. No drive. No shame. No action. To see SAF in the stands and go through this is not fair.

 

[Nou_Camp99]

Wrong? How many times did Pogs train? Wasn't Wan on the bench? If morally they are taking some kind of stand, shouldn't he just not be in the squad?

I'm no great fan of Pogba but the alternative, DVB, hadn't played a competitive game since end of March.

Had we started Donny over Pogba and still lost you'd have said why didn't we start Pogba.

This start to the season for us was always happening. I said before Europa kicked back in, as did a few others, we'd be in trouble and nobody wanted to hear it.

Should have sent the kids and ressies to Germany and given 6 or 7 of these players time off and had them back in 2 weeks earlier than we ended up doing.

 

[abailey123]

Given a night to reflect on the game I just think we’re really
Lacking in Match fitness and sharpness.
Some of the internationals have had less than a week with the team - Oles had a maximum of 2 weeks with part of the squad and one friendly. Palace just looked more ready for that game yesterday. Which is a concern given when are we going to be able to get some conditioning into the lads?
We need to play a fairly strong squad in the week to get some minutes into the lads who need minutes.
Wan Bissaka, Shaw, McTominay, Pogba, Greenwood, Rashford, Fernandes and Martial all need game time and match sharpness.
I honestly think we’re in for a ropey 3/4 weeks whilst the lads get game time in the tank.

 

[ArjenIsM3]

There was a stronger side sat on the bench. I'm no coach but why not start will the best team, be winning the game and then make changes? If they are strong enough to be on the bench, they are strong enough to play. If TMF got injured in the first minute, is Ole gonna say can't put Wan on, he's not fit enough?

That's far too black and white. Ole was very clear pre match that he had to make choices based on fitness. The ones on the bench were obviously less fit than the ones starting. Obviously he'd put AWB on in case TFM got injured because there is no better option available but that doesn't mean he was fit enough to start and it could have caused us even more problems. Why would you question Ole's motives when it's clear he rates AWB over TFM? You're basically saying "we should always start our best 11 on paper, regardless of any other factors such as fitness", which is absurd.

 

[Martialfc]

I honestly don’t think I’ve ever been this depressed after one of our games. I’ve been looking forward to the start of the new season thinking we might be able to do something but wow. That was so disappointing.

What I will never understand is that common sense tells me to always start with your strongest team regardless of the opponent. Once you are ahead then bring on the second tier players. Starting with TFM, Dan James and Mctominay was suicide. Get ahead in the first half then rest your better players! 3 points against palace is the same as 3 points against city! If not more important! I’m furious with ole and his selection.

 

[noodlehair]

- Maguire and Lindelof were an absolute joke in that game. I mean there were problems everywhere but Maguire in partiicular would have stood out as a fumbling oaf in a socceraid game, never mind a premiership one. It's also a bit of a common theme for him and I've more or less got no patience left for him now. He's just a centreback version of Pogba. Very good every so often but the rest of the time so bad that it's like eating lumps of dogshite over and over in the hope one turns out to be chocolate ice cream. Why do we keep doing this to ourselves?

- Also Pogba...why do we just insist on playing him and leaving him on the pitch when he's that bad? How many years has this gone on for now and it stilll hasn't sunk in for so many people that most of the time Paul Pogba just isn't very good. Yesterday he stayed on for over an hour of the game despite being a wandering disaster zone and looking completely knackered after about 10 minutes. If he's that bad take him off and if he isn't fit he shoudn't be starting.

- Why did we take our right back off and then move our only remaining midfielder to right back? This is the sort of thing the manager of the other team would do if you allowed them to make a tactical change to your team in order to help them win.

- Hallf our squad managed to spend their few weeks off behaving like an unprofessional mess and as much as people want to blame Woodward and dismmiss stuff like this, I don't think it's any coincidence that they then look like an unprofessional mess on the pitch. Palace have played one game. Watching that you'd think they were midway through their season and our players hadn't even returned to training yet.

- Not sure there's much pint moaning about not signing Sancho either when Ole still thinks picking Dan James over Greenwood on the right is a good idea. The reason Sancho would be a good signing is because it woould mean Greenwood wouldn't have to play on the right every single game. At the moment if we want to win games or score a goal before one of our defenders does something idiotic to turn the whole game into a desperate struggle, he does.

 

[Dr Fink]

Utter sh*t show yesterday. The players looked off the pace, passing was sloppy, awful first touches all round. It effectively reminded me of a Moyes’ team performance.

I’m afraid Rashford doesn’t warrant a starting place; he hasn’t since the C-19 restart. That RHS was particularly awful yesterday: Fosu-Mensah and James. The midfield was shocking, even Bruno. Martial had nothing to feed off.

We so need a creative right sided player who can break teams down, like that kid at Dortmund. We need a proven, quality CB to replace the Ice Man, who apparently has melted. Next window we need a Plan B striker for Ighalo.

 

[RC89]

I just watched the entire game and I counted 4 or 5 so that app you have may be a spoof.

Other players lost it more in fact but no one lost it 18 times.

It's the official United app. And I'm guessing it includes misplaced passes too. He defo lost it more than 4/5 times.

 

[Red00012]

I genuinely can’t think of a worse right side in my lifetime at Utd than TFM and Dan James.

 

[Cassidy]

So why didn’t we play pre season games? Everything at our club is fecking amateur hour. From the players on the pitch, through the dugout, all the way to the boardroom. It feels like another nightmare campaign and we’re only one game in.

Because by FIFA regulation you have to give your players 3 weeks holiday. Post the it was internationals and we had a friendly last week.

 

[VivaRonaldo85]

All the players were allowed to go on holiday for 2 weeks after the Sevilla game, rather than cracking on with pre-season and having time for some friendlies.

They had had 3 months off from March-June, they should have been given a couple of days then right back to it.

On yesterday’s performance it’s going to be at least a month before we’re ready, and by then we’ll have 4 league defeats.

It really is a double whammy to be so ill prepared both fitness AND transfer wise. On these grounds, we’re effectively writing off the first 3-4 weeks of the league campaign. Low and behold, what has been our problem the last how ever many seasons..... we always seem to start slow and by mid October we’re 15-20 points off the top of the table and the “fight for top 4 is back on”. It’s like a vicious cycle. Well it’s a case of click and repeat I’m afraid based on the club’s incompetence in preparation for the season from the top right down to the bottom.

 

[Monkey bus]

There was a stronger side sat on the bench. I'm no coach but why not start will the best team, be winning the game and then make changes? If they are strong enough to be on the bench, they are strong enough to play. If TMF got injured in the first minute, is Ole gonna say can't put Wan on, he's not fit enough?

I just think you can’t win as a coach in these situations. If AWB, or Greenwood, or whoever was on the bench and got embarrassed due to lack of fitness then the selection would have been a case of ridicule again. Let’s be honest, whichever side United put out it should be capable of beating Palace at home.
That’s why the performance is the issue not the selection.

 

[Bestietom]

Here we go again. Terrible display from professional players. Backline all over the place, and our forwards never got a shot on goal. Should hang their head in shame. Getting money for Jam. We need a LB, CB, and RW real quick. You can add a CF to this also.

 

[TJ Reid]

Maguire and Lindelöf.. 2 clowns

Expensive clowns at £110m for the pair

 

[TJ Reid]

That was Palace‘s 3rd game in eight days ....how can that be an advantage?

They’re match fit - Utd aren’t

 

[1988]

I think our lack of preparation and preseason is going to hurt us this season. A lot. And our miserable dealings in the transfer market, both outgoing and incoming, just sets a dark and unsettled tone for the oncoming season. We need signings. Badly.

Our match against Crystal Palace just screamed "unprepared". I'm genuinely shocked at how poorly we've treated our preparation. Wan-Bissaka pissing on travel restrictions, Maguire swinging about in Greece, Greenwood taking the headlines for all the wrong reasons, Pogba catching Covid-19 and only playing one friendly to get in match shape. Just not good enough.

I'll never ever understand the idea of starting James. James is perhaps an ok impact player on counters against a team that has to push for a result. But why start him against a Roy Hodgson team? They'll defend with 10 players sitting tight in their lines and hit us on the counter. He has no tools against such team. Pogba is our worst player when he's having a day like he had yesterday. I was firmly defending Maguire and Lindelöf as a partnership last season. We had a great defensive record. Third least scored against team despite de Gea being generous - yesterday however definitely shows that Smalling wouldn't be the worst addition to the team at all. We need a defender that can push for a place in the starting XI.

I do hope this will act as a wake up call and a much more determined team next weekend. If we struggle against Brighton we're in for a horrible season.

 

[FreakyJim]

Grr. I'm so angry I could spit!

 

[MartinRed]

It was pretty bad, but let's not get over dramatic just yet.

 

[Litch]

I'm no great fan of Pogba but the alternative, DVB, hadn't played a competitive game since end of March.

Had we started Donny over Pogba and still lost you'd have said why didn't we start Pogba.

This start to the season for us was always happening. I said before Europa kicked back in, as did a few others, we'd be in trouble and nobody wanted to hear it.

Should have sent the kids and ressies to Germany and given 6 or 7 of these players time off and had them back in 2 weeks earlier than we ended up doing.

Made no mention of who should or shouldn't. Not sure about your mind reading abilities either about what I would or wouldn't have said? I don't know where the players were up to or qualified to make that assessment but I would have started with my strongest team, and that def won't have included at least 3 of those players.....

 

[Litch]

That's far too black and white. Ole was very clear pre match that he had to make choices based on fitness. The ones on the bench were obviously less fit than the ones starting. Obviously he'd put AWB on in case TFM got injured because there is no better option available but that doesn't mean he was fit enough to start and it could have caused us even more problems. Why would you question Ole's motives when it's clear he rates AWB over TFM? You're basically saying "we should always start our best 11 on paper, regardless of any other factors such as fitness", which is absurd.

I guess as fans, it's a view that's no more subjective than others cause non of us actually know. What does fit enough to start actually mean than being on the bench to start if someone gets injured at any time? Isn't that just being fit enough?

Why not question his motives? Is Greenwood better than DJ? Has Fred consistently played better than Scott last season?

 

[DON’T PANIC ™]

We missed Matic yesterday. The games we played well in last season was when we had a fresh Matic. Unfortunately, he hasn’t the legs for a high frequency of games and his form dropped off towards the end of the season.
In my opinion, we need to sign a suitable replacement for Matic and at least one competent CD more urgently than even a RW.

We look like we will concede every single time another team attacks. Maybe if our forward players had more confidence in our defensive set up, we would see more running off the ball for the killer pass to cut teams open.

We were seeing this in the early games after lockdown when confidence was high and Matic was fresh.

 

[Parma Dewol]

Made me sad.

 

[Classical Mechanic]

Had we been in their position (3 games in 8 days) people would be blaming tiredness, like after lockdown.

They may but they’d be wrong. You use pre-season to get ‘match fit’. Tiredness early in the season comes from a lack of fitness not overplaying. Palace will be close to or at full match fitness now which is a big advantage. We‘ll need a couple of games to get there.

Id be amazed in Hodgson’s plan wasn’t to work us off the park early because of the discrepancy in fitness between the two sides.

 

[Feed Me]

Because by FIFA regulation you have to give your players 3 weeks holiday. Post the it was internationals and we had a friendly last week.

Interesting. I look forward to seeing how City look in comparison against Wolves.

 

[bsCallout]

Do we play a strong team against Luton to get match fit or do we play 2nd string to avoid overplaying players already?

Tough season ahead for squad management pov.

 

[Bestietom]

Lindelof or Maguire should have stopped zaha. Their defending is schoolboy stuff, and needs coaching.

 

[Hester_manc]

It's worrying that we were SO bad. We did not create many great chances against Palace. We got a goal after a coincidence, and Greenwood had a great chance. Otherwise we only have long shots. There was nothing creative from Martial and Rashford, and Bruno did not succeed in anything, even though he tried.
Pogba looked really, really, really bad. I do not know if he has a post-reaction to his corona disease, but he could hardly make a pass. Lindelöf could not block or tackle. I'm in shock that so many players were so bad against a team like Palace. It does not look good for the near future.

Shaw and McTominay looked okay.

 

[Bestietom]

Why play James when Greenwood was fit. These sort of decisions will lose us points.

 

[ArjenIsM3]

I guess as fans, it's a view that's no more subjective than others cause non of us actually know. What does fit enough to start actually mean than being on the bench to start if someone gets injured at any time? Isn't that just being fit enough?

Why not question his motives? Is Greenwood better than DJ? Has Fred consistently played better than Scott last season?

Because it's illogical. Ole always plays his preferred 11 when they're fit. So far he's only rotated when he absolutely had to or if it's a cup game. Given the non existent pre season we've had it makes sense some players aren't ready to play. This season's schedule is a shitshow and with the long season we've had, the amount of internationals we have and the lack of squad depth we have anyone could have predicted we'd suffer. What would've been a massive help is if we'd have gotten some fresh legs in early like Chelsea but Woody fecked that up too. Chances are this will be a very very long season, and I refuse to blame Ole for it.

 

[Wilt]

They’re match fit - Utd aren’t

agreed

 

[Litch]

Because it's illogical. Ole always plays his preferred 11 when they're fit. So far he's only rotated when he absolutely had to or if it's a cup game. Given the non existent pre season we've had it makes sense some players aren't ready to play. This season's schedule is a shitshow and with the long season we've had, the amount of internationals we have and the lack of squad depth we have anyone could have predicted we'd suffer. What would've been a massive help is if we'd have gotten some fresh legs in early like Chelsea but Woody fecked that up too. Chances are this will be a very very long season, and I refuse to blame Ole for it.

It's a view not a fact. There is context to everyone's start for the season and most of it applicable to everyone's start. There are things that happen during the season that you have to navigate. It's football. My view is equally illogical with his preferred 11 too. Rashford has been good for a long time but clearly hasn't been fit either but good managers work it out.
You might refuse to blame Ole, I don't either only but cause he can't be blamed for not being good enough. You can blame Jose and LVG cause they are proven. If Klopp and Pep had this squad, ee would be better. That's the caliber of manager we should attracting....

 

[Cassidy]

Interesting. I look forward to seeing how City look in comparison against Wolves.

Indeed I dnt expect them to be great either but Im sure they will be better than us. They played 2 preseason games

 

[TrueRed79]

Fitness or not but our two CB were so bad i couldn't not but laugh at them while watching the game. Lindelof is here four years now and has never been convincing. He was bad yesterday but Maguire was as bad. Giving the ball away, players running at them both freely. A horrible, horrible shit show. Again, we look meek at trying to break teams down. We are not a good possession based team and we looked completely clueless yesterday.

 

[Denis79]

So I went from watching an entertaining match between Bayern trouncing Schalke on Fri night, 8-0 where Bayern pressed and ran them ragged for a good 80 mins to this pile of crap.

Bayern played the CL final a day after us and started their league campaign two days before us yet we looked completely gassed already in comparison.

Crystal Palace trashed us and now we need an excuse why that happened. I'm pretty sure most teams are fit and ready, even those who had a similar fixtures last season.

 

[LVGSdive]

That was Palace‘s 3rd game in eight days ....how can that be an advantage?

Their season ended 3 weeks before. So more time to rest and plan. They also had less players being called up to their national teams for the Nations Cup games.

 

[Maticmaker]

What a debacle for the first home game!
First 15 minutes look like a Sunday league pub side who have spent all the previous night on the 'p**s.

I've watched United for over fifty years and we have had some poor starts to seasons, but yesterday was a new low. The worse offence was very few of our players really sought space, even when we were doing marginally better, right from the word go, it was almost like we were playing 'statues' " I know lets make it dead easy for Palace and go and stand next to our marker," certainly Rashford did, he rarely left the full backs side in the first half, he did attempt to move about 'a bit' in the second.
I bet Scholesy watching that was crying like a baby,. Palace had a tight defence no doubts, but in the second half on their left side space opened up a few times in and around the five yards outside their box, nobody made an attempt to get in there until Donny came on and his first six or seven touches (including the goal) were all 'one touch' plays.

Ole was at least honest after the game, apart from Donny's performance no positives to take away except perhaps one, on another day we could have lost 5-1, easily!

 

[ForeverRed1]

Going into this game I stupidly thought maybe we weren’t so far off the top two as people may think. What we did towards the end of last season was impressive and we looked good.

watching that yesterday, I don’t want to panic too much as it’s only our first game.. but it cant be denied we are so far away from where we should be.

Can’t really blame the players, not their fault they are just not good enough throughout the whole squad. The tactics are a little off which doesn’t help. I’m sure they give their all every game and while they do that, we need to keep supporting them.

until we get new owners with a more sporting interest, we are going to keep on going around this merry go round. I hope this is proved wrong.. but after 7/8 years since fergie left, it’s been the same. We’ve not moved forward really. It’s rotten to the core and not the players faults. Until the fans do something to take action, they will keep rinsing this amazing football club while neglecting its unbelievable potential ceiling.

heartbreaking.

 

[12OunceEpilogue]

Aren't some of our players involved in International games also? Lindelof, Martial, Bruno, McTom, etc.

Yeah a few of them have played football but I suppose playing together and getting in rhythm with each other is important. I certainly agree though that whatever preparation deficit we had with Palace doesn't completely explain that woeful performance.

 

[Isotope]

Yeah a few of them have played football but I suppose playing together and getting in rhythm with each other is important. I certainly agree though that whatever preparation deficit we had with Palace doesn't completely explain that woeful performance.

They just finished the season about a month ago (Europa League SF was on August 15 or about). And there's no rule to prohibit any team to have as many friendly as possible to get match fit.

A shambles time off by players, combined with a poor preparation for new season.