He talked about consistency within the defense.......then changes it again.
SAF this season
- Thread starter marjen
- Start date
sad takes the plaudits for his success but he has to take the blame for this.
We'd get torn to shreds.Fergie thinks we'd be able to compete with Madrid and Barca if we were still in the CL this year?
Can't really blame him for trying to protect Rio, to be fair. We're just in a shit situation having already lost an experienced centerhalf for the rest of the season.
It was the team selection and two odd decisions... FFS its Athletic Bilbao we are playing with the first leg at home. I saw the team selection and a got a bad vibe from then.
nani, carrick and ferdinand should have started.
We probably would have still been outplayed but not to the same manner. We might have even won. Doesn't help when they give them an offside goal and serve another in a platter with a dubious call. They deserved to win though.
nani, carrick and ferdinand should have started.
We probably would have still been outplayed but not to the same manner. We might have even won. Doesn't help when they give them an offside goal and serve another in a platter with a dubious call. They deserved to win though.
Again the first 11 asked for trouble.If the Europa League is taken seriously then the best players available have to start.The team isn't as good as before to have change it so much and get results
It was disrespectful to them to start with Jones in midfield IMO. They gave us a lesson in european football today, we were lucky it was 4 or 5.
If he's not going to actually take the Europa League seriously he could at least use it to give some youngsters playing time rather than just using it as an excuse to rotate the squad.
The tactics today were a joke. A changed side and a 2 man midfield vs Bilbao's 3. He clearly had no intention of going far in this tournament.
The PL is his main concern obviously. But I am sure he still expected the side he selected to perform better than they did.
We need to look at the quality of some of our players in the squad. That is all
Maybe a loss like this is just what SAF needs to realize we can't just show up and walk over teams anymore...
it's odd, because you figure he'd know this after we got booted from the champions league by Basel. But we keep making the same mistakes underestimating opponents and lo and behold it keeps coming back to hurt us.
it's odd, because you figure he'd know this after we got booted from the champions league by Basel. But we keep making the same mistakes underestimating opponents and lo and behold it keeps coming back to hurt us.
We're only in 2 competitions ffs. The decision making by SAF in relation to this competition is a joke. If he doesn't care about winning it he should rest the entire first team
Honestly, I know its not the done thing to criticise SAF, and I will probably be barraged with a torrent of abuse for even entertaining the idea, but we seem to be getting these bizarre tactical/selectional (new word!) surprises.
This is not kneejerk as it is not an isolated incident, we often seem to play players seemingly out of position, strange substitutions when much more logical choices appear to be available.
Lets look at today, a few things;
Young starting on the right and Park on the left - why do this when Young has played almost exclusively on our left this season, and when Bilbao have a very talented young winger by the name of Muniain on their left (our right), where we could use Park to help support the very attacking minded Rafael on the flank?
Fergie spoke about defensive partnerships and how well the Rio-Evans partnership had been doing and how important it is to get some continuity. And yet we drop Rio in favour of the talented - but clearly not fully fit Chris Smalling, leaving a very inexperienced backline for a tough European fixture, and one of our CBs having to be taken off early due to essentially not having fully recovered from his previous injury.
Following on from that, when Smalling had to be taken off we still didnt bring on the experienced figure of Ferdinand, but instead dropped Jones to CB, a player who has been prone to having the occassional lapses in concentration which we could not afford in this game.
Now to be fair, I thought our defense played well for the majority of the game. Evans played well, Jones looked reasonable at CB, Rafael was OK other than the horrible, horrible defending for their third and Evra was average, and by shifting Jones to CB it allowed us to get Carrick on without needing to use 2 substitutions, but after everything SAF had said previously, it seemed utterly ludicrous not to bring on Rio and get some much needed experience and calm into the backline, in a game where we were rushed and hassled constantly.
Next we come to what I would normally call Central Midfield, but that term just doesnt quite seem appropriate. What we had was a Centre Back and a Winger (ok I know Giggs isnt really a winger anymore, but thats not the point) playing in a CM pair against a team who again, hassled and pressured us and committed a lot of men going forward. Giggs cannot play as a CM pair without a partner with some positional discipline (ie Carrick) because he is an attacking minded player who will try to make runs, bring the ball forward and find space.
Pairing that with a Phil Jones who also loves to make his surging runs forward always meant we were going to leave gaps open at the back to expose our inexperienced back line, and we suffered badly from headless chicken syndrome in the middle of the pitch.
Bringing off Park was a bizarre choice. Yes we needed to try to freshen things up and introducing Anderson was a good choice, but Park had been playing reasonably well whilst Young had a very poor game in my eyes. The things Young can do very well are cross (from the left) and cut inside to shoot (from the left). Again it mystifies me that we played him on the right, but surely moving Park to the right, Giggs to the left and having Anderson replace Young would have made far, far more sense than keeping Young shifted out on the right and Rooney onto the left (?!).
Now again, to counter what I just said, none of that excuses some of the "performances" from our players tonight. Hernandez had probably the worst game ive seen him play for us. Rooney had a terrible first half, but just when he was starting to come into the game a little he was shunted out onto the left wing.
Young was horribly ineffective although again I put some of the blame for that on SAF for playing him on the right flank, but he could and shouldve done better all the same.
Jones and Giggs as a partnership simply doesnt work in midfield. The latter did well trying to orchestrate things, whilst Jones simply didnt seem to know quite what he was doing.
Yes its true that two of their goals were dodgy - one was offside and one resulted from one of the most bizarre free kicks ive seen in a while (although both seemed legit by Graham Taylor's rulebook), but make no mistake Bilbao deserved to win. They outplayed us for most of the first half and all of the second.
The only players I feel deserve any credit were De Gea, and Evans.
This is not kneejerk as it is not an isolated incident, we often seem to play players seemingly out of position, strange substitutions when much more logical choices appear to be available.
Lets look at today, a few things;
Young starting on the right and Park on the left - why do this when Young has played almost exclusively on our left this season, and when Bilbao have a very talented young winger by the name of Muniain on their left (our right), where we could use Park to help support the very attacking minded Rafael on the flank?
Fergie spoke about defensive partnerships and how well the Rio-Evans partnership had been doing and how important it is to get some continuity. And yet we drop Rio in favour of the talented - but clearly not fully fit Chris Smalling, leaving a very inexperienced backline for a tough European fixture, and one of our CBs having to be taken off early due to essentially not having fully recovered from his previous injury.
Following on from that, when Smalling had to be taken off we still didnt bring on the experienced figure of Ferdinand, but instead dropped Jones to CB, a player who has been prone to having the occassional lapses in concentration which we could not afford in this game.
Now to be fair, I thought our defense played well for the majority of the game. Evans played well, Jones looked reasonable at CB, Rafael was OK other than the horrible, horrible defending for their third and Evra was average, and by shifting Jones to CB it allowed us to get Carrick on without needing to use 2 substitutions, but after everything SAF had said previously, it seemed utterly ludicrous not to bring on Rio and get some much needed experience and calm into the backline, in a game where we were rushed and hassled constantly.
Next we come to what I would normally call Central Midfield, but that term just doesnt quite seem appropriate. What we had was a Centre Back and a Winger (ok I know Giggs isnt really a winger anymore, but thats not the point) playing in a CM pair against a team who again, hassled and pressured us and committed a lot of men going forward. Giggs cannot play as a CM pair without a partner with some positional discipline (ie Carrick) because he is an attacking minded player who will try to make runs, bring the ball forward and find space.
Pairing that with a Phil Jones who also loves to make his surging runs forward always meant we were going to leave gaps open at the back to expose our inexperienced back line, and we suffered badly from headless chicken syndrome in the middle of the pitch.
Bringing off Park was a bizarre choice. Yes we needed to try to freshen things up and introducing Anderson was a good choice, but Park had been playing reasonably well whilst Young had a very poor game in my eyes. The things Young can do very well are cross (from the left) and cut inside to shoot (from the left). Again it mystifies me that we played him on the right, but surely moving Park to the right, Giggs to the left and having Anderson replace Young would have made far, far more sense than keeping Young shifted out on the right and Rooney onto the left (?!).
Now again, to counter what I just said, none of that excuses some of the "performances" from our players tonight. Hernandez had probably the worst game ive seen him play for us. Rooney had a terrible first half, but just when he was starting to come into the game a little he was shunted out onto the left wing.
Young was horribly ineffective although again I put some of the blame for that on SAF for playing him on the right flank, but he could and shouldve done better all the same.
Jones and Giggs as a partnership simply doesnt work in midfield. The latter did well trying to orchestrate things, whilst Jones simply didnt seem to know quite what he was doing.
Yes its true that two of their goals were dodgy - one was offside and one resulted from one of the most bizarre free kicks ive seen in a while (although both seemed legit by Graham Taylor's rulebook), but make no mistake Bilbao deserved to win. They outplayed us for most of the first half and all of the second.
The only players I feel deserve any credit were De Gea, and Evans.
The deadwood program is not finished yet. We seriously need to start moving into a new period. Giggs and to a lesser extent Scholes 'as much as a I love them' are not what the club needs to be playing every week. They paper over real fecking huge cracks in our squad and when we get performances like we had tonight, it shows.
We need to be honest with ourselves, Scholes will not be able to stand up to a full season. He couldn't do it for the last 2 years, and he missed half the season this year. Giggs has got at the very best 1-2 years left in him. This year without injuries he'd be struggling to make the bench, which although seasons never go without injuries, you need a player like Park in his pomp, not Giggs now to fill the void. Somebody that will do the donkey work and let the flare players do their thing.
Park and Owen both have to go. Owen will more than likely retire first. Park is not the same player anymore which is incredibly sad to see. Such a selfless player that has had a massively underrated role in our success. His performance against Chelsea last year at OT in the league was absolutely outstanding. The way he managed to silence a Chelsea midfield that was having a cracking run and with a full head of steam was inspirational and imo, is exactly what we've lacked in certain games this year.
Berbatov while not deadwood so much as losing it, but his impact on the season overall is far too limited to warrant his pay packet.
It really is a case of needing a midfielder reaching his prime, another Park and a young winger.
We need to be honest with ourselves, Scholes will not be able to stand up to a full season. He couldn't do it for the last 2 years, and he missed half the season this year. Giggs has got at the very best 1-2 years left in him. This year without injuries he'd be struggling to make the bench, which although seasons never go without injuries, you need a player like Park in his pomp, not Giggs now to fill the void. Somebody that will do the donkey work and let the flare players do their thing.
Park and Owen both have to go. Owen will more than likely retire first. Park is not the same player anymore which is incredibly sad to see. Such a selfless player that has had a massively underrated role in our success. His performance against Chelsea last year at OT in the league was absolutely outstanding. The way he managed to silence a Chelsea midfield that was having a cracking run and with a full head of steam was inspirational and imo, is exactly what we've lacked in certain games this year.
Berbatov while not deadwood so much as losing it, but his impact on the season overall is far too limited to warrant his pay packet.
It really is a case of needing a midfielder reaching his prime, another Park and a young winger.
We need to protect Carrick and Rio. Welbeck and Nani were both on international duty and then played the full game against Spurs in what was a really tough game. Scholes needs to be looked after too.
I have no problem with his decision to rest those players. There are four main issues as I see it. The biggest one is clearly the injuries which have limited our options when we need to rest players as well as affecting the form, badly in some cases, of the players that are currently fit. Valencia, Cleverley, Fletcher, Vidic and Anderson who clearly isn't anywhere near being match fit (although he never is anyway). That's four midfield options missing right there as well as one of the best central defenders in the world.
The second is the inexperience at the back. De Gea, the Da Silva's, Jones and Smalling. That's going to cost you in Europe and ideally we wouldn't have to play so many of them together at the same time. The Van Der Sar, Vidic, Ferdinand axis with Carrick and Fletcher operating so effectively ahead of them was absolutely fundamenatal to our European success.
The third would be Fergie's tactics in Europe. Someone needs to show him a video of our 2007/08-2010/11 performances in Europe. It's like he's forgotten what made us so successful which is a bit strange really. You can't give good European sides that much space in front of the back four. They'll kill you.
The fourth is probably linked with the third. With Fletcher out we now have one central midfielder in our entire squad who is remotely effective when the opposition have the ball. This simply isn't good enough for any club, yet alone one of the biggest in the world, and it has to be addressed with the utmost urgency.
I have no problem with his decision to rest those players. There are four main issues as I see it. The biggest one is clearly the injuries which have limited our options when we need to rest players as well as affecting the form, badly in some cases, of the players that are currently fit. Valencia, Cleverley, Fletcher, Vidic and Anderson who clearly isn't anywhere near being match fit (although he never is anyway). That's four midfield options missing right there as well as one of the best central defenders in the world.
The second is the inexperience at the back. De Gea, the Da Silva's, Jones and Smalling. That's going to cost you in Europe and ideally we wouldn't have to play so many of them together at the same time. The Van Der Sar, Vidic, Ferdinand axis with Carrick and Fletcher operating so effectively ahead of them was absolutely fundamenatal to our European success.
The third would be Fergie's tactics in Europe. Someone needs to show him a video of our 2007/08-2010/11 performances in Europe. It's like he's forgotten what made us so successful which is a bit strange really. You can't give good European sides that much space in front of the back four. They'll kill you.
The fourth is probably linked with the third. With Fletcher out we now have one central midfielder in our entire squad who is remotely effective when the opposition have the ball. This simply isn't good enough for any club, yet alone one of the biggest in the world, and it has to be addressed with the utmost urgency.
What's so unbelievable about it?
It's the Europa League ffs. If it was a Champions League last 16 tie then Fergie would have started Rio, Carrick and Nani.
He is doing great job in the league, no doubt about that, but we are awfull in these cup competitions. I think Fergie can take blame for that, even he said(not directly though) that it is his fault couple of times.
Why have we given up on using 3 man midfields in Europe? Its utterly baffling that we use 2 men in midfield vs a team so obviously good at keeping the ball.
That's true.
He has done a amazing job in the Premier League.
But his team-selections in europe this season are really awful.
We've tried to ''fudge it'' by playing Rooney off the front and have him pick up the deepest lying midfielder but he hasn't done it very effectively. I saw Evans rightly bollock Rooney on a couple of occasions in the first half for letting his man constantly run off him. Giggs really isn't very effective in there either and when you add the naivety of Jones as the other central midfielder into the equation then you have a disaster on your hands. Park and Young both struggled defensively against the Bilbao wing backs. Park just doesn't have enough for this level any more unfortunately. There was an interview with Jonny Evans on MUTV after the game and he openly stated that we were far too open and our defensive shape was poor so at least someone at the club knows what's wrong.
Our entire defensive structure has been absolutely appalling in Europe this season. We used to be so disciplined and such a tight unit. We didn't need to have the ball to beat teams and despite losing Ronaldo even now we could still hurt teams on the counter attack with the likes of Valencia, Young, Nani, Welbeck, Rooney and Hernandez at our disposal.
Bring back catenaccio please. We did it so well even the Italians were impressed.
He doesnt want it badly enough to play his best men to go with the best tactics. Had it been the CL, the likes of carrick and nani would have definitely started. Rio likewise. Am not too fussed tbh, want the PL more.
People saying it's his selections thats the problem. Buy even with our best.eleven in the PL, how many times have we actually played well in the PL? It's something to do with our style of play. Its jusy too lethargic and we cant control things. We're getting found out in europe.
Im not going to second guess Sir Alex. He acknowledged that we were outplayed. Lets hope we can put in a better away performance and close the defence lapses.
Lately we seem to be letting every European opposition play like Barcelona, no pressing, no tackling until someone gets to the edge of our penalty area. This was Bilbao FFS not Barcelona, before that it was Ajax, Benfica, Basel, Otelul etc. The performance was insipid, couldn't hang on to the ball for more than 20 seconds.
We go for the low percentage option far too often when we have the ball. Giggs and Rooney are particularly guilty of this and then there are the wingers who cross the ball for wee Chicharito to try to get his head on it ahead of two 6ft 3 defenders.
There's nothing wrong with slowing the game down and taking the easy option. It doesn't help when some sections of the crowd start getting ''antsy'' when we're not attacking at 100mph every time we have the ball. This is where that ''English mentality'' rears its ugly head again.
Somehow I feel this season, we are more interested in the Premier league than in any other tournament. Fair game. We did not get the transfers we needed in the summer, for some reason or other. Money, or the correct guy, anything. It did not happen. The CL was just an illusion. With the side we had, we just could not match Barca or Real.
We started with a bang, but by Sept/Oct we lost steam. Injuries took their toll. Then came the CL, and we could not qualify for the KO rounds. That sounded the alarm bells. Fergie's worst fears were realized. We just did not have quality to fight on all fronts with the injuries mounting.
Priority now was the Premier league. CC, FA cup and Europa were all marginal. The plum was what mattered. We couldnt afford any more injuries.And the Europa cup games on Thursday nights, followed by the weekend matches. We needed the best and fresh team for the weekends. So, the team selection was dodgy.
Dont be surprised if we hear of a near reserve side going to Spain next week.
We started with a bang, but by Sept/Oct we lost steam. Injuries took their toll. Then came the CL, and we could not qualify for the KO rounds. That sounded the alarm bells. Fergie's worst fears were realized. We just did not have quality to fight on all fronts with the injuries mounting.
Priority now was the Premier league. CC, FA cup and Europa were all marginal. The plum was what mattered. We couldnt afford any more injuries.And the Europa cup games on Thursday nights, followed by the weekend matches. We needed the best and fresh team for the weekends. So, the team selection was dodgy.
Dont be surprised if we hear of a near reserve side going to Spain next week.
I agree with this 100%.It's like an obligation for some of our players to just run with the ball (Jones,Evra last night).It's too predictable at times.Platini once said something like :" A pass can eliminate players like no gifted player can".
You what? We're on track for our biggest haul of PL points ever and you have to ask how many times we've actually played well in the league? Christ on a bicycle, the lunacy on here after a defeat never ceases to amaze.
To be honest I thought I'd seen it all, but Redcafe has gone full retard in the last 12 hours.
This. We simply have forgotten to be patient and waiting for our chance to pounce. Some of our best European performances had us just pass the ball from side to side until we got an opening
That is why never replacing Scholes in the summer was a bad idea.
We are getting the results yes, but our overall performances havent been as good as it can be. Case in point, the spurs game. We started the season like manchester united, but are now stumbling across the line. How many teams have taken the game to us this season when previously they would be afraid to do so. Stat(in this case points) can be misleading when we are talking about overall performances during games.
Results are what matters. We truthfully haven't had the players available to us for the sort of fluid football expected here usually. Overall Fergie's team selections in the PL have been fine, it's his ECL selections that were utterly baffling at times.
Yup. One performance I look back on this season as a good example of when we can control possession and build our attacks in a sensible manner was the cup game at Anfield. We played a flat three in central midfield that day with Carrick, Scholes and Giggs. It meant that there was always a simple option available for the man in possession and we kept the ball pretty well I thought. Genuinely poor defensive mistakes cost us that day but we got our way back into the game to make it 1-1, not by over committing or by playing the low percentage option, but by patiently building possession and waiting for the right moment to strike. It was a really good goal and we simply haven't seen enough of that this season. Lack of central midfield options is the answer I hope but Fergie does seem very keen to play Rooney in that withdrawn striker role in a 4-4-1-1. Of course you have to say that it did work well against Chelsea and Schalke but it failed spectacularly against Barcelona. I think Park and Valencia's performances against Chelsea and Schalke were one of the keys to its success but we haven't seen anything like that all round level of performance from our wingers in Europe this season.
if hes not so bothered why does he keep saying he is?
That was my original point. We have had the results, but performances have been not up to standard, regardless of team selection.
That's grossly over-simplistic.
I would say our best performance of the season (our best away performance in years) was beating Fulham 5 nil on December 21st. That came in a run where we also spanked Wigan, QPR and Wolves.
More recently we've had a horrific run of fixtures and won 6 out of 7 games, only dropping points away to Chelsea.
We've had ups and downs - like every season - but our points total and league position reflects our overall performance. Which has been very very good. Especially away from home.
Have a watch of the game again and focus on what our midfield was up to.
Bilbao were actually very good (although it was hardly out of the blue compared to how they play generally), but it really wouldn't have made that much difference to our performance if they weren't.
All they had to do to get at our back four was run forwards with the ball. They were also frequently pressing one of our players in twos or threes, and instead of exploiting the space they were leaving or moving the ball to dummy them in, we just reverted to static football and trying to run through them. I've never seen a United midfield look as inept as that...and we've had some fecking stinkers in that area of the pitch more than any other.
Fergie's really buried his head in the sand with our midfield. It's frequently dragging the rest of the team down two or three levels now. It's completely reliant on Carrick atm...and not even to be succesful, just to be functional on some basic level so the rest of the team have a chance. Without him we just look like England.
I know Anderson and Cleverley have been injured but still...they both get injured all the time, and neither's actually proven anything that can be relied upon yet when fit.
Sad but true, I think SAF gambled a bit at the start of the season on Fletcher staying healthy, Ando stepping up and I think Cleverley's pre-season form convinced not to go into the transfer window in the Summer. I wonder how much of Scholesy's return was actually down to Scholes?