It is about getting the balance between genuine commercial needs and a proper structured training outcome.
No. Casemiro has been one of the smartest DMs for the past decade. He has always shown vision and the ability to get out of tight situations. You are not POY for a top 4 team without being very smart with the ball. Mount has always been highly rated. Although Bruno can be pretty dumb at times, he was selected captain and that has to say a lot about what ETH thinks.
This sums up the problem nicely, . No space in the middle wolves were very narrow defensivley. But lots of chances for overloads out wide. The right three triangle of Bruno/Anthony/A.W.B did ok but the left hand side of Shaw/mount/ and particularly garnacho didn't. Once Sancho and eriksen come on and we were able to sustain dangerous attacks from both wings we were able to pen wolves in somewhat build pressure and eventually got the goal.
Wolves were quite happy for United to attack from both sides. They didn't let A.W.B have the ball necceserialy they just didn't want mount and Bruno having space to work in the middle. The reason A.W.B was more noticeable than say Shaw was because Anthony was actually retaining the ball and combining with A.W.B and Bruno. Garnacho wasn't retaining and also wasn't combining with Shaw. When Sancho came on instead he retained and combined with shaw and eriksen and suddenly we could sustain attacks from both sides. Then we penned wolves in much more our high press became more effective and wolves opportunity to break dropped significantly.
Just watched it, pretty good summary, Wolves made it tough for us to play the way we wanted. What I just don't understand is the way we always seem to be on the back foot. For years now it seems most teams in the league outrun and out fight us, we are always one step too late, the players always seem to hold on to the ball too long, and it doesn't get better even with all the new signings.
This is the crux of the issue. As Roy Keane used to say, As a player you have to win your individual battles, you should never be outrun, outplayed or outfought". All 10 outfield players do that and your on your way to a nice win.
Wierd thing is that ETH hasnt tried him on the left. They he doent need to cut in can go outside and actual crozs using his left foot.
I agree. I’ve sort of been in the “we’re a better side with him in it” camp, but at this point I’m just not seeing it with him. If we’d paid £30m for him I’d have been disappointed. It’s crazy to see how much we’ve spent on him and Sancho and how little we’ve got in return.
But I am trying to judge over a long period of time. I feared he would be another expensive signing mistake. I've never rated him. I hope I am wrong.
Ten Hag has changed things and I don't think the players are on the same page with him at the moment. Playing Mount seemingly ahead of Bruno was odd. I just don't see Mount as a threat.
We have to accept it was. And Spurs will beat us if we repeat that abject performance.Wolves already got an apology from the refs
What a robbery today was.
Obviously the position we've found ourselves in here (and numerous other times during the match) is terrible, but what you can't see from the graphic is how Wolves got the ball. I think the big problem yesterday was just how easily we gave away possession in attacking situations, when we've committed players forward. We really do need to get better with the ball first and foremost. It's why City can get away with a similar set-up - their players are less likely to be running into blind alleys, passing straight to opponents or overrunning the ball.
Agreed
So comparing a result against a team we played around 12 weeks ago is more simplistic than people comparing it the first game of last season simply because it was the first game. Ok.
Not sure I agree entirely with this (and I didn't follow the match day thread during the game, so can't have been influenced by that). Our pressing didn't look very effective or intensive to me, in comparison with last season. And in any case it's questionable how much that mattered, given how many Wolves attacks started from our obscenely frequent ball losses well forward, and was transitioned into forward movement by Wolves before any press could really be instigated.
Antony constantly moved in and made our space to pass smaller. He was as much an issue as Garnacho. In fact Wolves where happy to let Antony have the ball because he did nothing of value with it, whereas they where on Garnacho constantly and didnt allow him any breathing room.
I tend to agree with you, and we did get the three points....but then why did we for long periods seem so 'off the pace' as we were against Wolves... our first match of the season?
This was the exact problem. We lost the ball 81 times. What we try to do is get the ball to the winger's who keep their width and try to hold the ball to let the rest of the team move forward (you see this particularly with Antony). Particularly we want the two 10's to underlap on the wingers to create the triangle with either the striker or the fullback. When the winger (particularly Garnacho) loses the ball pretty much everytime he looks at it you are always going to look terrible. There's also no tactical adjustment you can make for that either. We needed to haul Garnacho off after almost 20 minutes. I think we did ok defensively in the first half as we restricted Wolves to 5 shots, which was still too much, but in the second half we were cut open far too much particularly in the last 20 minutes.
That's not really true. We were only dangerous when we attacked down the right hand side which we only really did during two periods- towards the end of the first half, and when we scored the goal. The reason Antony moves inside is due to the overlap of Wan Bissaka. When he underlaps Antony will hold the width but Wan Bissaka tends to be more of an overlapping fullback. I don't understand the constant need to bring up Antony in these discussions when he created the most chances (tied with Bruno and Wan Bissaka), gave the ball away amongst the least amount of times, just to try and make Garnacho's impact on the poor performance seem less.
We didn't really create. Our xg was woeful
Yes totally agree. And actually Wolves were everything we should have been. They have a lot of talent. But it was the desire and teamwork that United should have displayed, especially at home. And you would have thought that the players would have sensed that something had to be done to stop them just running straight at our defence. But no. There was no reaction at all.I tend to agree with you, and we did get the three points....but then why did we for long periods seem so 'off the pace' as we were against Wolves... our first match of the season?
To be fair its been like this for a number of seasons now, very sluggish start, so you have got to think its got to be something to do with the pre-season regime/schedule?
Wolves were picking up the ball just outside their own box and just set off running, they didn't have to dodge or weave or work the ball they ran straight past our midfield and seem to catch a number of our defenders somewhat flat-footed, at least over ten yards or so. Admittedly AWB is getting better all around, but thank goodness for his party piece, of being able to chase down attackers and stretching them long legs out just in time.
It seems to me whatever they have been doing wrong in pre-season for a number of years now, they are still doing it. I suppose you could argue that the poor start last year was overcome, we won a trophy, got into CL etc.... but just think what we could do if we hit the ground running
You've taken one thing that I've said and then ignored the rest. What does that have to do with what I said? You haven't responded to anything that I said other than me saying "he created the most chances (tied with Bruno and Wan Bissaka)" with "well we didn't create chances therefore, none of what you said matters". If your going to reply to someone actually make a reply and not a throwaway comment.
That’s Redcafe for you
Let me explain. They let him have the ball and he only managed to create a few chances. Overall we didn't create because they let him have space and instead locked down our other players.
You can't look at stats and form an opinion while completely disregarding stats that go against your opinion. You say "they let him have the ball", is it possible that he's better at finding space? Hence, him receiving a greater number of progressive passes than Garnacho did, all the while we played predominately down the left? Like I said, we had two periods of attacking threat and that coincided with the two periods where we played down the right hand side.
Simon Hooper
replaced by Victor Lindelof
replaced by Christian Eriksen
replaced by Scott McTominay
replaced by Jadon Sancho
replaced by Facundo Pellistri
