Fairly, things do take a period of time to work, with the players organically finding their collective feet and growing together. But, if you can't even make an impression against an absolutely awful Wolves side, at home - a Wolves side who look dead certs to be fighting to stay in the division - you are starting so far behind the proverbial line that even the best of what the system with these personnel is supposed to provide, mightn't be worth the batterings it took to get them up to any kind of par. Fitness may also be factored, but the questions around: is the final product worth the grief? Still remain.
And I said this so many times: we're going to run Casemiro into the ground by November if we don't improve emphatically when it comes to controlling games and preventing them from being these wild, back and forth affairs.
The midfield has no connective tissue; a player who wants to link the play and thread the ball time and time and time again to others in red - the plan with all this verticality is getting the ball from A to C as quickly as possible, but if you're not able to control "B" as and when you want, you're creating a rod for your own back and a very chaotic and exhausting style of play.
Mount is getting a lot of stick, like he's the problem, but the reality is Bruno isn't a central midfielder either, so it's not one will thrive whilst the other lacks; instead we have two players who do their best work going forward from the top-end of central midfield, not working deeper into the central areas securing and settling play before then being progressive. I am not convinced you can bridge that because you're working away from the natural instincts of players and when the pressure is on, it's only natural to revert to type. Problem is, that pressure shouldn't be on against a side like Wolves - the top 10 teams in the league? Sure, but it's a bad sign against relegation fodder.
We can talk about what's supposed to happen in terms of support from inversion to flank Casemiro, but if we lose the ball so rapidly as we did today, that midfield adjustment doesn't even have enough time to form, let alone be settled and effective - what we saw today is what many of us have spoken about, and that's: the players high up the pitch using the ball poorly, losing it, and leaving Casemiro in no-mans land with far too much space to cover by himself.
ETH isn't Van Gaal, and he's likely to stick with this for quite some time yet. Ultimately it would be fantastic if he's proven right in doing so, but I think the opposite is going to happen and we're going to face some adversity or hammering(s) that force change. Why? because controlling games is far too difficult for the players we have. Perhaps we get a midfielder or two in with the qualities needed to control games, but if they're then utilised, doesn't it mark the end of this project anyway? I think ultimately, one will assume the AM and the other will go to the flank with whoever comes in taking over those #8 CM/AM duties whilst being the connector this midfield sorely lacks.
