[Sid234]

Normally - we'd lose this type of game, team had some grit to grind out a result. Our pressing was very uncoordinated and Casemiro seems to have his usual slow start after not playing competitor games for a bit. He had the same when returning from suspension last year.

I expect us to improve as we play more.

 

[Loon]

That Cunha is useful. Could do with a player like that who can glide through the opponents midfield.

 

[noodlehair]

Bloody hell mate, United should have saved a few quid and brought you in as head coach instead of Ten Hag! The club has really missed a trick here - can I be your assistant?

I mean there's a 7 page thread on here pointing out the exact same thing. There was a large thread before the game with a lot of people pointing out the same concerns. It was brought up by both Carragher and Neville on Sky due to how blatantly obvious it was, so the the sarcasm is a bit misplaced I'm afraid.

If our manager decides to do something completely and obviously idiotic there really is no point trying to sugar coat or play ignorance to it.

 

[Hugh Jass]

How does not pressing Onana nullify him?

I noticed this alright. It means there is no free player that Onana can pass his way out of to.

 

[noodlehair]

That Cunha is useful. Could do with a player like that who can glide through the opponents midfield.

I suspect most players can glide through a midfield of Casemiro trying to pick up 3 players at once and Mason Mount running about 3 metres behind them.

Every team we play will mysteriously have a player capable of looking like prime Yaya Toure against us if we play with that set up. It just requires the ability to run in a straight line unopposed with the ball.

 

[Hoof the ball]

Wolves had multiple ball barriers in midfield. That showed. Bruno cannot carry the ball at all. He has no capacity for ball carrying due to his low level of acceleration. It might explain why he attempts many high risk passes, because he's trying to make something dangerous happen before the opponent can close him down.

 

[MrBest]

Awb by far the best player. So many bad performances, Bruno was awful, casemiro looked like a lost puppy, garnacho failed to live up to his chance, rashford sloppy but graveyard shift. I thought antony started well but then faded. Onana was okay, some bad errors coming of his line but that's more driven by his crazy personality and mount, I forgot was even playing. First games of the season can either be a one off or a trend for the next 10. I hope its the former because if we play like that again, we will be breaking more records shortly. We badly need Amrabat, we were just overrun and when Erikson came on, it was like we had 10 men. Saying that, 3 points done, another 77 to go!

 

[glazed]

I suspect most players can glide through a midfield of Casemiro trying to pick up 3 players at once and Mason Mount running about 3 metres behind them.

Very true. And yet we won. Weird night

 

[Cassidy]

I noticed this alright. It means there is no free player that Onana can pass his way out of to.

That was just poor movement off the ball by United as usual

 

[Drifter]

Pre-season is not meaningless. We had a poor one and it showed tonight.

 

[reelworld]

We never play well against wolves, sure all our games have been 1-0, 0-0 or 1-1 been a bit of a bogey team ever since they got promoted.

I think within the last 10 matches, the only match with 2 goals lead was last season in the league. Rest as you said, single or no goals affairs

 

[tjb]

The funny thing about the reaction to this performance is it sums up our fanbase.

Mount was anonymous, but he was very far away from being our worst performer. Yes, we looked discombobulated tactically, but given that it's the first game of the season, that can happen. For me, this is also particularly true because we didn't really get as much time with this set up as people keep thinking, particularly not with Casemiro, Mount and Bruno. There were games where Mount was actually playing closer to Casemiro than he was to Bruno. It will take time, but eventually it will work, just needs patience. The issues today occured as a result of this change imo. People are blaming the midfielders without realizing that we were struggling to adapt the patterns that we've been employed since last season into this system. Our full backs were struggling to invert, our three at the back build up was a bit of a mess as the team was taking to much time figuring out who would be pushing up or coming inside. And when you have these operational issues in a game where your opponents are playing high tempo, aggressive football; it doesn't give you time and space to fix those type of issues. I don't have cause for concern in this regard because I know and have already seen us build up really well under ETH. Tonight even Licha was struggling, that says it all really.

What was a concern was our attack. In my opinion, they were the reason we didn't look great. They were constantly losing duels and giving the ball away without a fight. Wolves are always a bit of a tug of war for us in midfield, but when you have attackers who don't hold up, don't create and make bad decisions in the final third, you are going to struggle in games like this. Garnacho in particular was really bad. Rasmus coming in and Rashford shifting left should help with this. However, when Wolves' attackers can make better use of space than our attackers can, that says something is wrong. We won't have many games like the one today with the dysfunction, in fact, we will dominate most games; but scoring and taking advantage of attacking situations we get is where the fear with this team really is.

 

[Aussie_Red_Devil]

That was just poor movement off the ball by United as usual

At stages it was literally no movement.

 

[Wicked_Badger]

Poor game by almost everyone. But we won. We have 3 points more than we did this time last season. Take this rather than a thumping by Brighton.

 

[Blood Mage]

Poor game by almost everyone. But we won. We have 3 points more than we did this time last season. Take this rather than a thumping by Brighton.

We played better in that game though.

 

[Robindinho]

I noticed this alright. It means there is no free player that Onana can pass his way out of to.

More to do with our statue like movement.

Teams don't exactly press Ederson and look at the difference.

 

[Wicked_Badger]

We played better in that game though.

Strange sport, isn’t it?

 

[Wing Attack Plan R]

Really gosh can we get back De Gea and Maguire for some more comedy acts then ? are you missing it ?

No.

 

[ChenHoNam]

You would think that without Joao Moutinho and Ruben Neves controlling that midfield, we would had an easier time.

How wrong was I. Such a let down from this team.

If Raul Jimenez was there for them , it would have been 3-1 to Wolves.

 

[Waynne]

According to some of the posts regarding this match we will be lucky if we finish the season bottom of the Prem! We have played one match and have won three points against a Wolves team who always make things hard for opposing teams. No, I wasnt enraptured by our performance, yes there needs to be a lot of improvement, but lets all wait a couple of months before writing our obituaries, yes?

You should see the first page of the Tottenham vs United thread.

Could swear its nearing the end of the season and we're fighting relegation.

 

[Stig]

New manager bounce or us being complete and utter sh*t?

The latter.
And we really missed Fred and Mata.

 

[Wing Attack Plan R]

The funny thing about the reaction to this performance is it sums up our fanbase.

Mount was anonymous, but he was very far away from being our worst performer. Yes, we looked discombobulated tactically, but given that it's the first game of the season, that can happen. For me, this is also particularly true because we didn't really get as much time with this set up as people keep thinking, particularly not with Casemiro, Mount and Bruno. There were games where Mount was actually playing closer to Casemiro than he was to Bruno. It will take time, but eventually it will work, just needs patience. The issues today occured as a result of this change imo. People are blaming the midfielders without realizing that we were struggling to adapt the patterns that we've been employed since last season into this system. Our full backs were struggling to invert, our three at the back build up was a bit of a mess as the team was taking to much time figuring out who would be pushing up or coming inside. And when you have these operational issues in a game where your opponents are playing high tempo, aggressive football; it doesn't give you time and space to fix those type of issues. I don't have cause for concern in this regard because I know and have already seen us build up really well under ETH. Tonight even Licha was struggling, that says it all really.

What was a concern was our attack. In my opinion, they were the reason we didn't look great. They were constantly losing duels and giving the ball away without a fight. Wolves are always a bit of a tug of war for us in midfield, but when you have attackers who don't hold up, don't create and make bad decisions in the final third, you are going to struggle in games like this. Garnacho in particular was really bad. Rasmus coming in and Rashford shifting left should help with this. However, when Wolves' attackers can make better use of space than our attackers can, that says something is wrong. We won't have many games like the one today with the dysfunction, in fact, we will dominate most games; but scoring and taking advantage of attacking situations we get is where the fear with this team really is.

Good post.
Every time we play Wolves we start fantasizing about taking their midfield. This time it wasn’t Jota and Neves, but Cunha.

Everything got jammed up today because ETH’s system relies on a chain of events to work, and Wolves short circuited the system by not pressing Onana, that kept our fullbacks from inverting, and our two outlets (Garnacho and Antony) couldn’t get forward at all. So we had no space to exploit anywhere.

That meant we relied on Bruno to create, Rashford to finish, Mount to transition defense into attack, and Casemiro to shield the back 3. None of it came off. Bruno was a ghost when he wasn’t misplacing passes. Rashford had his boots on the wrong feet. Mount didn’t do too badly in my book because he stopped a hatful of dangerous attacks by himself. He was supposed to link between Bruno’s attacking/chasing the ball, and defense, giving Bruno more freedom.

When Eriksen and Sancho came on, we started getting up the left wing and passes started finding their targets. The “system” worked better.

I’d say that’s the laboratory confirmation that RAshford centrally with Garnacho starting doesn’t work, like at all. Until we have a CF fit, we need to use Sancho as a false 9 because that was the only thing in preseason that looked coherent.

 

[Wing Attack Plan R]

The latter.
And we really missed Fred and Mata.

Not to mention Herrera and Ji-Sung Park.

 

[croadyman]

Wolves have every right to feel robbed of a result,how we have kept our unbeaten home record I haven't a clue. Huge win but there is absolutely no way we deserved it

 

[weizxx]

Playing bad and won, we call that title omen here.

 

[UnofficialDevil]

Sky sports saying Wolves registering 23 shots on goal is the most by an away side at Old Trafford since Chelsea in 2005.
Was it really that many shots?

 

[Okey]

Feck me that was poor! Silver lining is surely it can only get better from here right? At least this time we have 3 points. We had zero after 2 games last season. We move...

 

[Howl]

I mean there's a 7 page thread on here pointing out the exact same thing. There was a large thread before the game with a lot of people pointing out the same concerns. It was brought up by both Carragher and Neville on Sky due to how blatantly obvious it was, so the the sarcasm is a bit misplaced I'm afraid.

If our manager decides to do something completely and obviously idiotic there really is no point trying to sugar coat or play ignorance to it.

I'm really not sure that's true. In theory the midfield works correctly. However, no amount of tactical nous can account for your left winger losing the ball almost everytime he touched it. Nor can it account for your "striker" refusing to run whilst also losing the ball at every turn. The whole point of playing with the two tens is to create overloads on the wings with your winger's holding wide. That all breaks down when your winger can't hold the ball to save their lives. We've literally seen this system work in the premier league just a couple of seasons ago. We still however, lack the number nine who is halfway decent on the ball, and can hold the ball up.

 

[croadyman]

Playing bad and won, we call that title omen here.

Miles off

 

[croadyman]

Sky sports saying Wolves registering 23 shots on goal is the most by an away side at Old Trafford since Chelsea in 2005.
Was it really that many shots?

Was that the game when Tiago scored a peach

 

[Big Ben Foster]

Was that the game when Tiago scored a peach

I think the one where Fletcher scored the only goal and Alan Smith of all players put in a MOTM performance in midfield

 

[croadyman]

I think the one where Fletcher scored the only goal and Alan Smith of all players put in a MOTM performance in midfield

Oh the game later in the year,thought we were talking about the one where we gave the guard of honour to them for winning League.Have just checked and they had 21 shots in the game you were referring to back in 2005

 

[captain666]

Disturbingly bad performance,back to playing like a team of strangers.

 

[RedDevil@84]

Seems like a continuation of last year where we could look disjointed and reliant on some kind of individual moment to save the day. We looked weak physically and not really up to the task. Garnacho at least had the teenager excuse.

Played badly, the visitors were denied a penalty, and got all 3 points. Almost Liverpool like performance.

 

[croadyman]

Best team lost and it feels so good

How exactly does it feel good

 

[croadyman]

we need a lot more signings

more midfielders
a defender
a striker

rubbish

Dreaming if you think we will sign 4 players

 

[Devil You Know]

we need a lot more signings

more midfielders
a defender
a striker

rubbish

The existing players need to be coached better.

 

[Giggsy13]

After 12 months we still haven’t seen any progress in ETH style. People on social media are saying Ole played better football…

Well feck, close up shop and shut down the club, the oh so powerful people on social media have spoken…

 

[Pscholes18]

Yeah I'm convinced it's the players, manager after manager struggle to get feck all out of this lot. Again, fecking clueless in the final third.

Garnacho is over hyped...scores a winner and everyone thinking he's the next big thing.....not that he won't become a great player but getting the ball, driving down the pitch then does feck all with it.

The passing in game was abysmal. I mean surely when a player receives the ball at a particular position on the pitch, shouldn't he have an out as in he should know how to get rid of the ball??? How many time did someone receive a pass then then just sit there not knowing what to do or where to go??

Rashford...avg player at best. Does nothing with it. Tries to score on every touch.....I'm sure it's due to him playing out of position....I know he means well, tries to make things happen, but it all falls flat.

First match, overreaction, yes of course, but by now this team should be showing us some exciting football and it's more of the dull bs we have become use to. Noticing a lot of laziness out there as well. Big three points but surely that shite Wolves side should of comfortably won.

 

[dpansheth]

Bruno is on and off so much in the final third, (not just today), Rashford turning into blind alleys, Garnacho is still a hype ( a promising one but a hype), but all of that to me, falls squarely on coaching. No excuse for players not knowing to go corner flag for last two minutes, no excuse for players looking gassed after 1 game, no excuse for spending $200M and yet look like amateurs against a team who barely got a manager a week back. For all sweet leadership quotes ETH gives I now think is time to deliver.
First game and all that, fine, lets start seeing some improvements game after game.