[UpWithRivers]

I cant for the life of me understand how we are going to win anything without dominating the midfield or at least competing. Sure we have gotten away away with it this season - but only just. You cant say we are dominating the midfield in any game this season. Just getting away with it. McTominay and Eriksen against Gundogen, Silva and De Bruyne? Someone explain it to me. It makes no sense. Sure you can say Bruno works hard but its just not a proper 3 man midfield.

I get we need to get away from 2 DM's but to move forward we need a proper 3 man midfield. At least against the likes of City. Fred/Eriksen/Casemiro for example. Sure we would have still lost lost probably, but we wouldn't have been battered. For me its where we lost it. There was just so much space and yes everyone looked sht but that's what happens when you are overrun. And Im not blaming Eriksen or McTominay. They have done well this season. I just dont see them winning the midfield against City on their own. Its like playing 1 CB. Doesn't matter who the CB is, you will get battered and that CB will look like a Championship player and run ragged.

Ten Haag needs to get us dominating the midfield or at least competing if he is to get anywhere

 

[Ekeke]

The only 2 real positives were Antony - in a game we were awful in he had 1 or 2 good moments and a great goal. And Martial coming on being very hungry for goals and having got 2 hopefully he's ready to start and go on a goalscoring run up front for us.

Now for the negatives...

Eriksen didnt track back and Varane held off for Foden's first goal. Either could have stopped it neither did.

Varane going down injured and staying down. That led to the corner defending with 10 men, McTom didnt win the ball in the air and Haaland climbed higher and scored the header.

Varane couldnt reach the cross for the 3rd but Haaland did and swept it in. Varane then came off injured. Should have come off already if he couldnt play

4th is a good break from City's point of view but Malacia shows less desire to get to the ball than Foden who gets there and tucks in from the cross. Eriksen doesnt do enough to stop KDB advancing in front of him either.

5th Dalot gets sucked in, Sergio Gomez makes use of the space for a fast cross and Haaland is first to react and Martinez doesnt stop Haaland getting there or his shot. Smashed in

6th Shaw plays Foden onside and Lindelof lacks positional awareness and doesnt realize Foden is in behind him till its too late. Again Shaw could play him off or Lindelof could be switched on. Neither happened the result is a goal

Other than all the goals we couldnt keep the ball. We would get it towards Bruno and Eriksen and then play a hopeful pass for Rashford to chase, usually with City recovering the ball in their defensive third. We completely lacked the ability to just move the ball around our midfield evading the pressure from City's players and having some of the ball, waiting for higher percentage passes to become available.

 

[MrSingh2002]

This one was on the midfield and attack even though we conceded goals.

The ball losses when we weren't even under pressure in the first 30 mins was a joke. Rashford, Sancho, Eriksen, Bruno, McTominay were all a disgrace with the ball and Antony was non existent.

You cannot win away at City by being that poor at building out an attack so poorly. They was on the players as you can't say the tactics didn't get us into promising positions or transitions into the middle third. We had no quality at all today. I hope the manager gets stuck into the players this week. He has to.

 

[Ronaldo's Love Child]

Can anyone please explain to me why for some time now we seem so reluctant to change formation against stronger opposition.

Over the last few seasons it appears that 4-2-1-3 is untouchable. Fergie would always mix it up and often move players out of position to do a job

 

[MrSingh2002]

That's why Ten Hag wanted another CM in De Jong. Eriksen wasn't going to be the answer for all games during a season.

Casemiro needs to come in and have a chance too. It's time for him to have the next league game to prove where he's at.

January/Summer window we have to go for a Striker, CM and GK so we compete.

The back four weren't a disgrace today for me. Varane should have gone off at 1.0 when we sprained his ankle. Instead he went off at 3.0 down when he clearly wasn't going to be right. Bravery doesn't overcome ankle sprains.

 

[danigl]

Would seriously like to see Bruno, Mctominay and Rashford out, then put Casemiro next to Eriksen in the middle, Sancho as cam and Garnacho out left.

 

[2 man midfield]

We must be a dream for Pep. We’re dicking all their title rivals yet we continue to roll over for him twice a year.

 

[Lee565]

Of all the possible transfers we could and should have completed post fergie, I will never understand how the hell we showed no interest in de bruyne, we had just finished the previous season stronger and looking better than city under pellegrini who was still going into the next season as the manager but we had van gaal and his odd ball transfers

 

[Loon]

We said that after Brentford. We need more players in jan, we have a set of toothless people here. Casimiro also looks like he has come for a pay day, hopefully it's jist rhythm but he looks bad.

We need new players, but it was never going to be a quick fix, no matter what happens in Jan .

 

[RopersReturn]

It also underlines how important the desperately needed upgrade of Carrington is. Not just for training but to aid post match recovery.

 

[RedBanker]

You seem incapable of considering 2 topics at once. That seems to be your problem. The reality is more complex than just A or B. Both can be true.

Thanks for letting me know my problem. Have been searching for decades. Now get on the teams case Sherlock.

 

[NoPace]

Let's not forget, Liverpool had the most touches in our pen box since Opta started collecting stats. Arsenal outplayed us for large chunks.

Stick Haaland up front for them and thise results would have looked very different.

Nunez being out hurt Liverpool against us. Firmino was really poor and they needed someone in the box far more than another midfielder in that game, though even if not suspended he might not have started yet.

 

[buckooo1978]

obviously we were terrible

we reminded me of a boxer hanging on from the first bell hoping to reach the end of each round

Still 100% believe in Ten Hag and his job will be to close this gap

quite a funny finish and if we'd another 10 mins I think we'd have scored again

 

[RedB4ndiT]

I hope Ronaldo leaves in January. It would free up some much needed wages...

 

[NoPace]

I guess this has been touched on - more than a few times. In fact, it's probably already been delicately manhandled to death.

City has a helluva lot of money, but so do we. And they purchased well and we didn't. The gap is totally down to our recruitment, not the coach and not the players.

Boys against men.

I'd say the coach helps with the recruitment a bit. We could compete with Mancini/Pellegrini City. Pep's City is both a matter of recruitment and his managing, like Klopp at Liverpool but if they had 2 shiny new midfield generals and an RB to push Trent.

 

[Leftback99]

Can anyone please explain to me why for some time now we seem so reluctant to change formation against stronger opposition.

Over the last few seasons it appears that 4-2-1-3 is untouchable. Fergie would always mix it up and often move players out of position to do a job

Because Bruno must always play.

 

[Giggsy13]

Yawn.

 

[Moston Red]

Was today just a case of being beaten by a better team? I think so. Nothing we could do. Obviously we want to blame someone, The Glazers, ETH, coaching, ole, rashford, mc t.
Haaland is a freak..difficult to cope with that.

 

[sugar_kane]

Not overly fussed by today's game, the result was never really in doubt.

Yes we were completely outclassed, but unlike the last couple of times we've met we at least looked like we were at least trying and had some sort of approach - it was just badly executed, and we still don't have quite the personnel we need.

I'd be a lot more worried if we didn't have Ten Hag as manager, he made some mistakes himself today but I have no doubt whatsoever he will have learnt a lot from this and has the balls and brains to take on the task of getting us to City's level.

Good to see Martial and Antony on the scoresheet again, although not at all convinced the latter is going to work out as a successful signing.

Worst thing by far was watching those Poznan dancing plastic cnuts gloating again.

 

[TheRedHearted]

Pep out
Pretty plz?

 

[bosskeano]

i'm sorry but the defending on the first 3 goals was amateurish at best....Eriksen and Varane were poor on the first one, eriksen marking Haaland on the corner? seriously...Varane caught ball watching on the 3rd goal with no help from Dalot

agree though...until we get a complete overhaul of hte midfield, we won't win anything. Bruno doesn't defend and neither really does Eriksen so there are MASSIVE holes in the midfield to play into and easily play out of

 

[bosskeano]

end of the day...no one expected us to win over City and Liverpool dropped 2 points to Palace....

we win our game in hand and that only puts us 2pts back of Spurs who are in third position

 

[redmanx]

I left Manchester totally bemused; the first half it was as if we had regressed to the chaos of last season with endless stupid mistakes, poor passing, bad tackling and constantly giving the ball away. We deserved to be 4-0 down at half time and I was expecting a real drubbing with City scoring 6,7,8 or more! Second half we seemed more together, but was that because City had virtually decided the game was over and stopped playing? I had no idea, but they were certainly not at the races. The final score probably flatters and shames both teams in equal measures, but it was good to see Martial, a player who has failed to impress me in his 6 years at United, score a couple; I only hope he can now come good on a more regular basis because theres no denying his ability....its his attitude that worries me. Now we have to regroup; City are the best team in Europe and beating them at home was always going to be tough, lets hope the players and manager all learned from this defeat.

 

[croadyman]

Tactics wrong in hindsight, way too open first half.

Why did he have to play so open against them, surely he saw how Forest got utterly decimated with that kind of approach. Needed to follow the blueprint of Dortmund who really troubled City in that game.

 

[croadyman]

Half the goals were avoidable with basic football. They all shat themselves from the off.

Needed changes in the middle after their second.

Be nice if Rashford made a few challenges next time. Criminal that.

We just love humiliating ourselves in these big games don’t we. Even at our greatest we didn’t regularly dish out dominating performances or hammerings like this against City and Liverpool.

Two hattricks against us is unforgivable. No doubt City will come up with some cringeworthy PR for two of the ugliest cnuts to grace the game to share the match ball.

Antony best goal of the match.

Mad we won the second half but they’d completely changed their team. It does feel a little easier to take with them showing a glimmer of spirit to score three.

Changes made too little too late just like the Brentford massacre

 

[croadyman]

Because they spent smarter and have competent footballing men.

Yeah which we let them put in place by dithering over Guardiola

 

[manclad1256]

It’s a heavy loss against a side that have been heavily financial doping for a decade, lying about sponsors and hiding payments etc… to build their squad under a world class manager.

Meanwhile, it feels like we are starting again after a long period of sustained mismanagement.

We will be back, and when we do, it will actually mean something, as compared to our synthetic neighbors down the road. No matter how much Pep jumps up and down in feigned excitement, it will never wash over how they got there.

Do you really think we can come back under the glazers?

 

[The Mitcher]

Yeah which we let them put in place by dithering over Guardiola

Pretty sure Fergie asked him and he refused. We didn't dither in that regard.

 

[Offside]

we win our game in hand and that only puts us 2pts back of Spurs who are in third position

Why are we making posts like this at the start of October? Really weird to make a race of it so early in the season. Our game in hand won’t be played for 3 months.

 

[Leftback99]

end of the day...no one expected us to win over City and Liverpool dropped 2 points to Palace....

we win our game in hand and that only puts us 2pts back of Spurs who are in third position

Lose next week and we're behind Everton.

 

[RopersReturn]

In truth the result was inevitable. It was a shame and embarrassing that we shipped so many goals none the less.

 

[predator]

That 6th goal from City gets worse every time I see it. A Sunday league defence would've stopped that given the numerical advantage we had.

 

[Eddy_JukeZ]

Brutal game to watch.

We had a chance for a counter before City's 1st, but Sancho holds on to the ball instead of releasing it and then we concede after losing the ball in the same attack.

We're going to go nowhere if we don't commit to a high press with a high line. There's no point playing a high line if you're not going to engage in coordinated pressing.

 

[RazorOz]

The biggest problem is a midfield three of McTominay (or even if you put Casemiro in instead), Eriksen, Bruno is way too lightweight for this kind of game. We were never going to be on the front foot in this game, and that midfield was always going to be overrun, and it was. I can't believe Eriksen and Bruno both lasted 90 minutes, one needs to be dropped for this kind of game imo.

On top of that nearly every offensive player threw in a stinker too, as with the limited chances we did have the passing was terrible.

 

[NewUser777]

I think Ederson had more touches than Bruno.. Hard day at school. Impossible to pick a motm

 

[Tigersam]

It’s tricky because although we all hate to admit it, they’re currently the best team in the world, and they don’t have any obvious weakness, all we can really do is try and pick up some trophies here and there and wait for pep to leave, Haaland sounds like he’s already got his eye on a move anyway.. I think every team in the league is in the same position tbh, I don’t feel anything about losing to them because they’re essentially Abu Dhabi athletic club.. losing to a proper club like Liverpool will always be worse

Yes, it was on the radio today that he is actually a die hard Leeds United fan, is that where you think he wants to be? Is that what you mean?

 

[Oldyella]

I think Ederson had more touches than Bruno.. Hard day at school. Impossible to pick a motm

Which of them got the most completed passes to a city player? Feels like that could have been close.

 

[croadyman]

Pretty sure Fergie asked him and he refused. We didn't dither in that regard.

Yeah because Bayern got there first

 

[croadyman]

Yes, it was on the radio today that he is actually a die hard Leeds United fan, is that where you think he wants to be? Is that what you mean?

Thankfully will go to Spain in maybe 3 years

 

[The Mitcher]

Yeah because Bayern got there first

That doesn't mean we dithered. I don't think Pep ever really wanted to come here, Klopp was asked also, and he refused. None of the best wanted to come here for some bizarre reason.