We're not watching SAF's classical playing style.

[Sultan]

Hallmark of SAF's teams over the last couple of decades has been lightening counter attacks. The opposition dared venture out unless they went behind and had to chase the game, at which point United were at their devastating best. These days we mostly manage to control and dominate yet our play is laboured.

- has SAF changed his game plan?

- players missing through injury or off form (particularly Valencia and Rooney)

- we don't have the personnel?

Your thoughts?

 

[TonyMontana]

"I think we know ourselves that come the second half of the season we'll definitely get better," he said. "At this moment in the time, we just need to be in that bit at the top of the league.

Sir Alex Ferguson after the match

 

[Sultan]

Sir Alex Ferguson after the match

You can't tell me SAF organises his troops to play better in the second half of the season Tony. That comment is an admission we have not been playing to standards expected at United so far this season.

It's not much of a ask to be better in the second half of the season.

 

[stubie]

Fergie tends to go with that European formation nowadays where the focus is to soak up the attack from the opposition and wait patiently for the opening.

 

[TonyMontana]

You can't tell me SAF organises his troops to play better in the second half of the season Tony. That comment is an admission we have not been playing to standards expected at United so far this season.

I'm not saying SAF organises his team to play better in the second half of the season, maybe he knows that not all of our players have reached top form yet and we will get better later in the season, when Rooney starts scoring again and when Valencia come back of his injury.

Remember last season how good we were in the second half until Rooney got injured, I think we will be even better once we reach top form again.

 

[Spoony]

I bet even Fergie's gobsmacked that we're level on points with Chelsea. As for our playing style, we've definitely missed Valencia and Rooney, that being said...we weren't all that special when those to were playing regularly. And yeah, we're dull as feck to watch. This isn't Manchester United.

 

[datura]

Not many teams commit many players forward against us either which doesn't help, and we often lack the vision/imagination in midfield to play the ball early behind the opposition defence to get them turned and scrambling.

 

[DanH]

I think it's just a case of our midfield lacking a certain something currently.

 

[Spoony]

Not many teams commit many players forward against us either which doesn't help, and we often lack the vision/imagination in midfield to play the ball early behind the opposition defence to get them turned and scrambling.

We've needed a midfielder for a couple of seasons.

 

[evra]

I can imagine it's pretty boring for the neutrals, although it would help if we played against teams that actually ventured out of their half.

 

[Sultan]

Fergie tends to go with that European formation nowadays where the focus is to soak up the attack from the opposition and wait patiently for the opening.

We don't have the players to play such a game with Valencia injured, and Rooney suffering on and off the pitch. As I said we're just labouring through games without much spark. The midfield mostly dominates, but lack creativity.

Most of our creativity is coming from Nani and Evra.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Tactics are the same as always but the performances aren't there.

When Berbatov and Nani were on form we looked full of goals but they've gone off the boil. No Rooney, Giggs or Valencia either. No great surprise we're lacking penetration these last few games.

 

[Eugenius]

With Rooney and Valencia out and Ronaldo gone, we don't have anyone fast enough/clinical enough to effectively punish teams on the counter attack. We have guys like Nani that have the ability to do it, but the three previous guys just have a knack for making the right decision when running at high speed despite Nani's improvement in that area.

With our defence being a bit shaky and with no massive individual attacking threat it makes sense that we try to control the game and probe.

 

[Carl]

Totally agree with the OP. Our tempo is slow, we seem to lack ideas, passing isn't crisp and we don't seem to dominate games.

If aliens landed and watched that first half there's only 1 side they'd have said played the better football and it wasn't the team in red.

 

[Bear Attack]

I think we are devoid of creativity in our play and our central midfield is not strong enough.

Today's performance was quite rubbish. It didn't seem like we could string a couple of passes together without getting intercepted and setting up a counter attack for the opposition. Carrick and Fletcher, from the likes of what I saw today, is definitely not a strong enough pairing for most teams in the Premiership.

And it was quite evident that we had a serious lack of drive and direction in our play so your questioning of Sir Alex's gameplan isn't unwarranted at all. A lot of the time, I saw our players not knowing what to their ball and because of their hesitation, they would get robbed of possession.

 

[Sultan]

The best way to judge how good we have been this year is count the number of times the crowd at Old Trafford has been made to stand up during games.

I assure you I can't remember many, if any occasion this has happened this season.

 

[stubie]

We don't have the players to play such a game with Valencia injured, and Rooney suffering on and off the pitch. As I said we're just labouring through games without much spark. The midfield mostly dominates, but lack creativity.

Most of our creativity is coming from Nani and Evra.

I'll take comfort from the fact we are still unbeaten & joint top despist playing below par. It will be interesting to see what happens around March time when Valencia could be back & hopefully Rooney will have found his form on the pitch.

 

[TonyMontana]

With this central midfield, we got to two european cup finals. I think is strong enough.

 

[Allforone]

Fergie admitted after the game today he feels we need a more settled line up there's been to much chop and change, to be fair he's done a lot of that without needing to in the past but you have to say injury's have played a big part this season.

Rooney/Giggs/Valencia have all missed large chunks of the season, not only 3 of our best attacking players but 3 of our quickest, i think when you take out that much pace your bound to lose a bit of edge in the final third, we've had to constantly chop and change the midfield and front line due to circumstances beyond our control, we relied on the brilliance of Berbatov and Nani for a couple of months which kept us going and during that time we played some very good stuff and looked very good up front, in recent weeks both those have gone off the boil somewhat and with Giggs and Valencia still injured and Rooney only making the bench today its not surprising we've struggled with our play especially as an attacking force in the last few games especially.

The signs from here are good though, today we saw Rooney make a comeback which can only be good news and Giggs was on the bench albeit unused for the first time in 6 weeks, if we could just get a break from all the injurys and disruption i think we'll be ok and its refreshing to hear the manager speak of the importance of a settled team, one of my main dissapointments with the team selection over the last couple of seasons is the needless chopping and changing of players, i understand sometimes a freshen up is required but i think fergie himself would privately admit hes gone overboard on it at times.

 

[redwhiteblack]

Hallmark of SAF's teams over the last couple of decades has been lightening counter attacks. The opposition dared venture out unless they went behind and had to chase the game, at which time United were at their devastating best. These days we mostly manage to control and dominate yet our play is laboured.

- has SAF changed his game plan?

- players missing through injury or off form (particularly Valencia and Rooney)

- we don't have the personnel?

Your thoughts?

Alex wants 1 more Champion's League before he retires and he knows that this style of play - absorbing opponents pressure and closing games off - is his best bet of doing that.

I think he's using PL games to practice this tactic and to instill this ethos into the younger/newer players.

Yes, we are missing key personnel, but even still it's often obvious that the team has been instructed to slow the pace and focus more on measured, patient build up play. And I'm referring to HOME games again lower league opposition here!

To be honest, I think Alex has earned the right to deny us a little excitement in order to fulfill one of his remaining ambitions. I mean, we have after all had the honour of being United fans through a truly golden era over the last 15 years.

 

[noodlehair]

Don't mean to lay into Fergie again but I think quite a bit of it is down to the team selection.

In every game where we've played our strongest available starting line up, or close to it, we've been absolutely fine in terms of the football we've played. We'd been leaking goals at the back but that's clearing up now Rio's back.

Since the Sunderland game though, we keep playing disjointed, imbalanced starting line ups, and as a result, we're getting imbalanced, disjointed performances, and players struggling to find form. It's not realy that surprising...I mean, was anyone expecting a front two of Macheda and Obertan to suddenly produce an expedition of footballing brilliance when they've barely got 90 minutes of Premiership experience between them (let alone as a partnership). It was exactly the kind of performance you'd expect...again. If we'd gone in with Scholes in the middle, and Berbatov behind a striker, we'd have probably won about 5-0 and looked a lot more convincing.

I don't really understand why we do this. Maybe Fergie feels he needs to keep the squad happy, but if that's the case, the squads far too big...I count about 27 players who'd be expecting regular games when fit. That has to be far too many.

When you think that 99% of the creativity comes from just the four of them - Rooney, Berbatov, Giggs and Scholes, and we keep going into games lately with none of those four on the pitch, it's not that surprising that we struggle to look convincing or pleasing on the eye.

 

[TonyMontana]

Alex wants 1 more Champion's League before he retires and he knows that this style of play - absorbing opponents pressure and closing games off - is his best bet of doing that.

I think he's using PL games to practice this tactic and to instill this ethos into the younger/newer players.

Yes, we are missing key personnel, but even still it's often obvious that the team has been instructed to slow the pace and focus more on measured, patient build up play. And I'm referring to HOME games again lower league opposition here!

To be honest, I think Alex has earned the right to deny us a little excitement in order to fulfill one of his remaining ambitions. I mean, we have after all had the honour of being United fans through a truly golden era over the last 15 years.

Watch the first three goals, we were amazing in that part of the match, not exactly measured, patient or boring.. and that's in the Champions League.

 

[Sultan]

With this central midfield, we got to two european cup finals. I think is strong enough.

Players can lose form, and on occasions click better playing with certain players. Scholes, and Giggs were 2 years younger, and we had Ronaldo in the form of his life.

 

[evra]

With this central midfield, we got to two european cup finals. I think is strong enough.

You have to admit that it's the weakest area of our squad, compare us to Barca (who we should be aspiring to emulate) and it's depressing.

 

[Allforone]

With this central midfield, we got to two european cup finals. I think is strong enough.

Carricks not the same player, Scholes is still class but a few years older and Fletchers in probably his worst spell of form for 2 years, and we dont have Ronaldo any more, to be honest the success was more down to a world class defence and an attack that had 2 world class individuals who won us tight games (Ronaldo/Rooney) than the midfield, it was solid but it was even then not a great asset.

Not for one minutes suggesting we cant get to another champions league final but i think its patently obvious the midfield is an area of concern at the minute.

 

[Bear Attack]

Don't mean to lay into Fergie again but I think quite a bit of it is down to the team selection.

In every game where we've played our strongest available starting line up, or close to it, we've been absolutely fine in terms of the football we've played. We'd been leaking goals at the back but that's clearing up now Rio's back.

Since the Sunderland game though, we keep playing disjointed, imbalanced starting line ups, and as a result, we're getting imbalanced, disjointed performances, and players struggling to find form. It's not realy that surprising...I mean, was anyone expecting a front two of Macheda and Obertan to suddenly produce an expedition of footballing brilliance when they've barely got 90 minutes of Premiership experience between them (let alone as a partnership). It was exactly the kind of performance you'd expect...again. If we'd gone in with Scholes in the middle, and Berbatov behind a striker, we'd have probably won about 5-0 and looked a lot more convincing.

I don't really understand why we do this. Maybe Fergie feels he needs to keep the squad happy, but if that's the case, the squads far too big...I count about 27 players who'd be expecting regular games when fit. That has to be far too many.

When you think that 99% of the creativity comes from just the four of them - Rooney, Berbatov, Giggs and Scholes, and we keep going into games lately with none of those four on the pitch, it's not that surprising that we struggle to look convincing or pleasing on the eye.

Well said and I completely agree albeit the bit about us demolishing them 5-0. I would say we would get a similar scoreline but only a much better performance.

 

[TonyMontana]

Players can lose form, and on occasions click better playing with certain players. Scholes, and Giggs were 2 years younger, and we had Ronaldo in the form of his life.

Fletcher and Rooney were two years younger too, we didn't have Valencia and we didn't have this Luis "best winger in the country" Nani.

 

[TonyMontana]

Carricks not the same player, Scholes is still class but a few years older and Fletchers in probably his worst spell of form for 2 years, and we dont have Ronaldo any more, to be honest the success was more down to a world class defence and an attack that had 2 world class individuals who won us tight games (Ronaldo/Rooney) than the midfield, it was solid but it was even then not a great asset.

Not for one minutes suggesting we cant get to another champions league final but i think its patently obvious the midfield is an area of concern at the minute.

Form is temporal, both Carrick and Fletcher will get a lot better in the next few months. Scholes may be older, but he hasn't lost anything of his game, is still one of the best midfielders on the world. We don't have Ronaldo anymore but we have Valencia and a better Nani.

Also, we didn't have this Wayne "goalscoring machine" Rooney we have now, once he starts scoring again we will play a lot better.

 

[redwhiteblack]

Watch the first three goals, we were amazing in that part of the match, not exactly measured, patient or boring.. and that's in the Champions League.

Yes, Tony, a Champion's League game that we were knocked out in...

This is precisely why I believe Alex has adopted the aforementioned approach!

 

[TonyMontana]

You have to admit that it's the weakest area of our squad, compare us to Barca (who we should be aspiring to emulate) and it's depressing.

I just don't think our midfield is that bad. I think a lot of you suddenly forgot how good we played during the second half of last season. We could have reached the european cup final if it wasn't for a couple of individual mistakes, we played a lot better than Bayern Munich in that match. We could have won the league too, but we missed Rooney a lot against Chelsea and Blackburn, that's why we bought Chicharito.

 

[Nistelrooy10]

No personnel for that. Tevez, Ronaldo, and Rooney, with Carrick and Scholes in top form were able to spray around passes and move like no other team in the world. Yorke and Cole had telepathic abilities, Giggs was a speed demon with dribbling skills to boot, Becks had vision and crossing, Scholes and Keane in their prime etc

Now you have Hernandez-not there yet, but will be, he has great speed. Berba, not that type of player, Rooney-off form, Nani-holds the ball up, doesn't make right decisions, Park-average counter attacker, no dribble, bit slow, Scholes - no legs, Carrick- off form.

Fergies simply can't play like that. That's why we induce a sleeping atmosphere

 

[Snow]

To summarize it:

We're waiting for an opening when playing and we lack penetration. So basically we're like a neutered rapist with confidence issues.

 

[Cina]

We don't have as good a team as we used to, simples.

Thankfully, Chelsea and Arsenal aren't very good either.

 

[TonyMontana]

Yes, Tony, a Champion's League game that we were knocked out in...

This is precisely why I believe Alex has adopted the aforementioned approach!

I mean, we got knocked out but we still played a great match, we were fantastic in those first 10 minutes.

The players and the manager are experienced enough to know in wich matches you can play attacking football and in wich matches you have to play in a more measured and patient way. I think they are playing like that (slow, patient, measured) because the team hasn't reached top form yet not becuase they have to "practice" a certain style of play.

 

[kietotheworld]

With this central midfield, we got to two european cup finals. I think is strong enough.

The central midfield was better in 2007-9, but more importantly, it played a different role when we reached the Champions League Finals. It would be 'strong enough' if we had superb forwards who relieved the pressure on the central midfield, and we didn't need the midfield to do a lot of attacking, but that's not the case. Compared to the rest of the team it is fairly weak, so it is the most obvious area for us to improve in.

Fletcher and Rooney were two years younger too, we didn't have Valencia and we didn't have this Luis "best winger in the country" Nani.

No, we had Cristiano 'Best player in the World' Ronaldo and Carlos 'Very good striker' Tevez. As for Wayne 'Goal Machine' Rooney, his goalscoring's not improved because he's become a far better player in Summer 2009, it's improved because he's played a totally different role since Ronaldo left.

 

[TonyMontana]

The central midfield was better in 2007-9, but more importantly, it played a different role when we reached the Champions League Finals. It would be 'strong enough' if we had superb forwards who relieved the pressure on the central midfield, and we didn't need the midfield to do a lot of attacking, but that's not the case. Compared to the rest of the team it is fairly weak, so it is the most obvious area for us to improve in.



No, we had Cristiano 'Best player in the World' Ronaldo and Carlos 'Very good striker' Tevez. As for Wayne 'Goal Machine' Rooney, his goalscoring's not improved because he's become a far better player in Summer 2009, it's improved because he's played a totally different role since Ronaldo left.

Well, but that shows Rooney can replace Ronaldo in terms of goals, so we don't have to worry about that.

And I think we do have "superb forwards who can relieve the pressure on the central midfield" just wait till Rooney reach top form again and we got Valencia back, Fletcher and Carrick won't be that worried about going forward and the team will look as strong as it looked during those 2007/2009 european campaings.

 

[wr8_utd]

Hallmark of SAF's teams over the last couple of decades has been lightening counter attacks. The opposition dared venture out unless they went behind and had to chase the game, at which point United were at their devastating best. These days we mostly manage to control and dominate yet our play is laboured.

- has SAF changed his game plan?

- players missing through injury or off form (particularly Valencia and Rooney)

- we don't have the personnel?

Your thoughts?

Agreed. It's not a knee jerk reaction because today was definitely not the first time. It's been the same for 4 games now. The Wolves game could be forgiven since half the squad was out, the City game again was away and not easy to beat a team set out to defend. Our performance at Villa was unconvincing but again could maybe be explained by the fact that our players were yet recovering from the virus.

Today however was a strange performance. We looked very labored throughout the game and even when against 9 men we did not really look like scoring except for the last 8-10 mins when we bombarded their goal. We can definitely play better and I'm sure we will see a huge improvement too but right now our level of play is worrying. It's slow and lacking in tempo.

And I agree, Valencia has been a huge loss. Can't wait for him to return and give us another option on the wing. Having him and Rafael on the wing pumping in quality crosses will be

And Nani on the other side ofcourse.

 

[wr8_utd]

I just don't think our midfield is that bad. I think a lot of you suddenly forgot how good we played during the second half of last season. We could have reached the european cup final if it wasn't for a couple of individual mistakes, we played a lot better than Bayern Munich in that match. We could have won the league too, but we missed Rooney a lot against Chelsea and Blackburn, that's why we bought Chicharito.

True. But the problem now is that Rooney has not been able to recreate last years form and Valencia who provided tons of assists and 7 goals is out as well till Feb so there's more pressure on our midfield to do more. And it has been dominated by most teams this season. We look a different team with Scholes playing. Today there was nothing in our game until Scholes came on and started bringing the wingers into the game and spraying passes around.

 

[TonyMontana]

True. But the problem now is that Rooney has not been able to recreate last years form and Valencia who provided tons of assists and 7 goals is out as well till Feb so there's more pressure on our midfield to do more. And it has been dominated by most teams this season. We look a different team with Scholes playing. Today there was nothing in our game until Scholes came on and started bringing the wingers into the game and spraying passes around.

Yes we will have to wait till february to see that great team again but I think the midfield has coped well without those players... we are top of the league.

 

[WireRed]

We've always been an attacking team under SAF, not a counter-attacking team. That part of the game has only really become an integral part of our make-up in the last 5 years or so. Before that we were always a side that would control games and who could score from any situation.

We don't control matches as well as we did in the past because quite simply, our midfield isn't good enough, and hasn't been for many seasons although it's even more obvious now that previous world-class attack and defence have declined for various reasons. Aston Villa's under 9's giving Carrick and Fletcher the mother of all run-arounds a week ago summed up our current ability, or lack of, to dominate games at the moment.

Oh for the days of Beckham, Keane, Scholes, Giggs as our quartet, or even an on form Carrick with Scholes ala 2006/07