Inconsistency. Well, depending on how Leicester does tomorrow, there are now either 3 or 4 teams in the PL who have been more consistent than us this season. None of them by a larger margin than what could be overcome by the end of the next round. If you look at the whole period from the end of the January transfer window, there is only one team - Liverpool - who has been more consistent than us. In addition to which we currently co-lead a CL group which is a tough as any we've been in in living memory. So please, let's drop this nonsense about inconsistency. In terms of results, we are not a team marred by an unusual level of inconsistency.
Also, again you get the voices arguing that today's performance shows what a badly coached team we are, and that we're only being kept afloat by Bruno's magic. But that's not how football works. Teams that are badly coached, badly organised and/or lack an effective system don't play brilliantly when they use great players, and awfully when they use less good players. They underperform even when they use brilliant players. Like Real Madrid did in their galactico period, and like Argentina and Germany did at the last world cup. And like Chelsea did in Mourinho's last season. No one, not even Messi, and certainly not Bruno Fernandes, turns a team lacking those things into winning teams. The kind of teams that does play brilliantly when they use great players, and awfully when they use less good players, are teams who lack the depth of quality in their squad to sustain their system when their best players aren't on the field. If today shows anything, it's that exactly that is the case with Manchester United. The kind of football we play with our best XI, which is the kind of football we should be playing, simply can't be delivered if certain key pieces are missing. That's not a reflection of how good Bruno and Rashford are, it's a reflection of the fact we lack other players who are capable of delivering roughly the same function that they have in the system. If the system was wrong, then it would not work with them in the lineup either.
This is the same for everyone. How good were Manchester City when they had no healthy strikers, or missed their best central defenders? Is that because they were badly coached, or because Guardiolas system wasn't good enough? Of course not.
We specifically do not have anyone capable of filling Bruno's function when he's not playing. The hope was that'd be van de Beek, but the returns today weren't confidence-inspiring.
The problem is not coaching or system, the problem is depth of quality in the squad, especially up front. Which we were
all complaining loudly about not that many weeks ago, as the transfer window ended. So how come people have suddenly forgotten that, and now expect results and performance as if we had the top squad nobody thought we had in October?