The rule that players get booked for celebrating on the crowd is sensible. Pundits and fans are too concerned with the passion of the game and not with safety.
The Unpopular Opinion thread. Post yours here.
- Thread starter ShakeUnBake
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Yeah, I agree. He's a smashing young player but he does have a hell of a lot to learn. Hopefully he develops and matures, over the next couple of seasons and refines his game.
Fans live for those moments, so do the players. I can't think of too many incidents where people have been hurt, celebrating with their own fans.
Pretty much. People will argue until they're blue in the face that it's all down to intangibles and things will click somehow, at some point.
Agreed. Now for a slightly related unpopular opinion:
we should have signed Anton in the mid 2000s. Playing alongside his brother would have made him world class and we'd have had a centreback pairing with a near-telepathic understanding definitely
It's a nice sentiment but I don't think he had it in him to improve as much as he needed to, to reach that level.
Very probably. I remember wanting it to happen and it would have been good having another set of brothers at the club with the Nevilles and De Silvas. Of course it didn't turn out too bad for us with the big Serbian.
There was one at Hull this season
I want this to be true.
One? Well that changes everything then!
What happened with that?
It would be the best for the team in the longer term if we persevered with the team that played Saturday, with Rooney and Ibrahimovic warming the bench.
Some fan got injured when all the players came and celebrated with the fans after Rashford's goal. He broke his arm or leg can't quite remember (there was conflicting stories I think)
This is what I wanted to say regarding Mata. Realistically, he is the most valuable player we could sell right now, and I think we should get everything we can for him. Pogba shouldn't be shoved back to a deeper role to suit Mata and force us into a 4-2-3-1. So, as you said, when we break Mata can't keep up. Add to that whenever we do have a chance to break quick that we can't put in early crosses from either wing because we play inverted players on both sides. On top of the inverted players our fullbacks are not great crossers either.
As it stands, we have no great crossers and inverted players on both sides that slow down attacks and only want the ball played to their feet. Still extremely predictable in our attack.
If it weren't unpopular, it'd be wrong by default.
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Liverpool will be close to 15 points ahead of us at Christmas.
It is, and it would be foolish to wait for serious injuries before starting to combat it.
Zlatan's link up play is simply awful and his pass completion rate in most games must be less than 50%.
No and, uh no.
Bear in mind he is almost continually playing killer balls out flicks though he's not looking for high passing percentages
Footballers are entitled to their ridiculous wages.
Since he's arrived his link up play hasn't been as good as I thought it'd be, but tonight is a bit of a weird time to bring it up as he linked up well against Feyenoord, though he was a little wasteful. He can link up better than he's shown domestically though.
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Too many supporters on here don't understand that our glory period from 93-14 was unprecedented and will never be repeated and no other side in world football was as successful for as long a period of time.
This all day! Sometimes I have to remind myself that we may never repeat that level of success and it's pretty unrealistic to think we will.
We will win the league.
Martial's moments of magic last year masked his overall performances - he had a lot more bad games than good and the way he's playing this season isn't a surprise.
I'm still not convinced with Juan Mata and I want to say it now as it's harder to say these opinions when he's in top form not one of our 'under fire players' and supposedly one of our most important players. For me he's just a squad player.
A good player, with very good control of the ball and good intelligence but for me his lack of physical attributes really let him down, he used to get criticized as a 'luxury player' I can see why he's labeled this even though he does work very hard for the team, his lack of speed really affects our general play sometimes, particularly when we have less mobile players with Rooney and Ibra in the starting 11 aswell. To get the best out of Mata I feel you need to tweak the team more for his own strengths than other players in our squad which can be difficult. In this respect I believe Valencia is the perfect foil for him.
I totally get what Gary Neville has said before as I agree with him about not being the typical United wide guy, (Ok we know this already) but from our history and what we have seen work on the wing id generally rather have a faster more direct, attacking player in style of a Rashford or a Mkhtaryan as we saw in the Feyernoord game than Mata who too often cuts inside and can't transition the game as quickly as id like to see us do, he dwells a bit on the ball to much for me despite being a very neat and tidy player.
But he's playing very well at the moment and he has a knack of appearing in the right place at the right time which he has been one of the best at if not the best at in the last 3 years. But it's the general quickness and building attacks which I have been mostly let down since he's come here, Maybe I expected he was a more David Silva, Ozil type player so I should just remove that thinking out my head but Id prefer these players over him for example if were going down the 'number 10' route.
Again for me a squad player who is rightly starting and rightly getting subbed off by Jose
A good player, with very good control of the ball and good intelligence but for me his lack of physical attributes really let him down, he used to get criticized as a 'luxury player' I can see why he's labeled this even though he does work very hard for the team, his lack of speed really affects our general play sometimes, particularly when we have less mobile players with Rooney and Ibra in the starting 11 aswell. To get the best out of Mata I feel you need to tweak the team more for his own strengths than other players in our squad which can be difficult. In this respect I believe Valencia is the perfect foil for him.
I totally get what Gary Neville has said before as I agree with him about not being the typical United wide guy, (Ok we know this already) but from our history and what we have seen work on the wing id generally rather have a faster more direct, attacking player in style of a Rashford or a Mkhtaryan as we saw in the Feyernoord game than Mata who too often cuts inside and can't transition the game as quickly as id like to see us do, he dwells a bit on the ball to much for me despite being a very neat and tidy player.
But he's playing very well at the moment and he has a knack of appearing in the right place at the right time which he has been one of the best at if not the best at in the last 3 years. But it's the general quickness and building attacks which I have been mostly let down since he's come here, Maybe I expected he was a more David Silva, Ozil type player so I should just remove that thinking out my head but Id prefer these players over him for example if were going down the 'number 10' route.
Again for me a squad player who is rightly starting and rightly getting subbed off by Jose
It hasn't?
So, less than one third of the season completed, you have already concluded that we are not getting top 4?
That's defeatist and sounds odd.
But hey, I understand this is supposed to be an unpopular opinion....so it's cool.
Not too many sane supporters expect the club to have that kind of success, not with all the other clubs who can compete with United for the best players. What all of us "dream" about is that we're still in contention for the league title around Christmas with a hope of winning it sometimes in the next few years. Our title hopes dissapere in October and we're left praying for a top 4 finish for the rest of the season.
Agree.
Lol I almost said the exact same things in the Mata thread about 20mins before yours.
Juan Mata | 2016/17 Performances
You being convinced by him or not just depends on what your expectation of him is. I simply admire the way he has grabbed his opportunities under Mourinho and has cemented his place as a consistent starter. His form will fluctuate as the season progresses but so far so good really.
Think a few share this view (myself included) does well as a 10 but as a wide right kills our attacking speed down. On form as a 10 he's great to watch though.
Eric Bailey is far overrated by caf. He is new to the club, he has done okay in these early days, nothing amazing and hasn't convinced me at all that he is certainly the answer to our long term future. In fact, he didn't look that distinguished against the only top teams he faced; Man City, Liverpool, Chelsea and we did concede 6 goals against them.
You could be a politican with that outrageous spin!
How can you bring Chelsea into this, when for starters Bailly went off when it was 2-0, and those first 2 goals couldn't possibly be pinned on Bailly. Smalling was gooning around on both. How could Bailly have influenced those?
0 goals conceded at Liverpool. Again, struggling to see a problem there...
Which leaves the 2 goals v City. I can't even remember the goals to be honest, unlikely to be Bailly's fault.
Great defenders cover the partners, he couldn't do that for Smalling.
The whole team played behind the ball against Liverpool, which means he didn't have to do much against them.
Against City, he lost the header against Iheanacho which rendered Blind being out of position and couldn't stop De Bryne as he skipped past Blind.
As for the 2nd goal in the same game, it was a poor clearance by Bailly which led De Bruyne to have it in a decent position from which he gambled by having a shot at the goal which it the post and Iheanacho scored from the rebound. Again, Iheanacho was supposed to be marked by Bailly, he should have prevented Iheanacho from being first to the ball after the rebound.
I, very well, remember Caftards were blaming Blind for the goals against City and no blame was shifted to Bailly. Just because he is 187cm and strong and fast, Caf love him, while Blind is hated cos he is not a typically English center back.
I think a lot of the excitement comes from the potential.
At least I thought Bailly wouldn't become an instant regular in our backline, and surprised me positively.
Of course if you then don't believe he will improve I guess the opinion is valid. He did already show a desire to improve though, he was much better against Liverpool than City. In particular he got rid of his undesired passing.
I don't think Blind is hated by any means. I think most like him as the perfect squad player. But we certainly should be looking better for a centre back if we have any designs up the table.
Blind definitely deserved stick for letting De Bruyne just waltz past him for that second goal by the way.
I'm struggling to see how Bailly could have "covered" for Smalling in that Chelsea game! The first goal Smalling was odds on to get there first and clear it. Instead he stopped, let their man in, while De Gea had come charging out. An absolutely ridiculous goal.
And the second goal, how do you "cover" when it's a ball in the air and your partner makes a Horlicks?
Both of them fecked up for different reason but somehow you're making it sound like Blind's error was caused by Bailly.
This isn't correct. Both Bayern and Barca had comparable successes during the same timeframe. Sure, their lows were probably lower than ours but on balance of evidence there isn't much to seperate the sides.
I disagree, if their lowers were lower then it isn't comparable. But also they are in leagues historically won by one or two clubs (same as Scotland) in a league such as the Division one/Premier League where there also used to be more games played (42 a season until 96) and I think you can see that the glory years are unmatched in modern football.
5 Champs leagues
13 la liga
6 copa del Rey
Barcelona 1992-2016 is a better period of success than ours.
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