WSL 25/26 | United v Brighton - 12:00 Sat 2 May

jojojo

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Brighton come into this one off the back of beating City 3-2 last weekend. We arrive with a draw against Spurs and a vague hope that Chelsea will drop points to Leicester to keep United's European qualification possibilities open until the final match.

Tough last home match of the season and some goodbyes to say - most significantly perhaps a goodbye to Leah Galton.

Match is live on Sky
 
According to the press conference, Skinner is hoping that Leah may be able to play some part in the game.

Dominic Janssen and Elisabeth Terland are both still out, but may be available for the Chelsea match. Drury won't play again this season.

Everyone else available. Presumably that includes Millie Turner who limped off against Spurs last week.
 
jojojo said:
We arrive with a draw against Spurs and a vague hope that Chelsea will drop points to Leicester to keep United's European qualification possibilities open until the final match.
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I was holding out that "vague hope" until yesterday, but now think even that is overly optimistic. After an embarrassing beatdown by Chelsea -- which I watched until it became clear it would be a massacre -- Leicester now have nothing to play for until a playoff to stave off relegation. I think their spirit is broken and I'll be very surprised if they put up any meaningful resistance against Chelsea.

Of course, for any of that to matter we have to beat Brighton, which feels to me like a 50-50 proposition at this point.
 
So sad that Leah is leaving, even if she is well grown up and has had a year of injuries. Really one of my favorite charachters in the United team for a long while.
 
Good to see Zigiotti and Toone available to start. Interesting to see if it's Malard or Rolfo who takes up the central position.

George takes over from Turner at centre back - perhaps precautionary with Millie limping off against Spurs.

Leah Galton on the bench. Hopefully we'll see a goodbye from her from the pitch.
 
IMO Malard's best position is in the middle, and Rolfo's best position is on the left, so I'd be shocked if they didn't line up that way.

Here's hoping that our beloved #7 is fit enough to have the kind of game that reminds everyone what we've been missing for the last four months.
 
Well we've been living dangerously for a while so no surprise to see Brighton score.
 
Flat performance from us. I'd say it's because we've got nothing much to play for except that it happened against Spurs last week and we definitely had something to play for then.

Brighton still lead 0-1 after 60 minutes.
 
FT 1-1

Fair result on the day. Underpowered performance from us, too slow, too uninspired.
 
Only caught a bit of today’s game, but what I did see, apart from the goal, was pretty dire. If Skinner’s time is coming to an end he seems to be going out with a whimper. The race for a Champions League place looks to be over.
 
I said it last week but it's clear that we are on the way down and the club needs to make changes or things are going to get much worse next season. Under skinner we have been shocking against big teams and now the gap between us & the lesser teams is going down as well. We are going to end the season with 11 league wins out of 22. Just not good enough and we need a new manager.
 
Sorry I'm late. I switched over to the WCL semifinal right after the final whistle and have been too busy to comment ever since. Anyway, here's my take....

I think this season has, unfortunately, played out exactly as we all should have been expected. The moment we finished top-three last season my first thought (besides "yay!") was, "be careful what you wish for." It was obvious to everyone in and around the game that our squad had nowhere near the size or depth to be able to compete in four competitions this year, and that consequently we might well fail in all of them. We did get some great signings in the summer, and then a few more in the winter break, but given the number of players who left or were otherwise unavailable the net squad size didn't actually increase by much. Then the situation was exacerbated by an unlucky rash of injuries, including Ella Toone for most of the second half of the season.

What I think we've seen over the last five or six weeks is the unfolding of a virtually inevitable scenario: We had been running on fumes for several weeks, trying to stay competitive by sheer grit and determination, until the tank finally ran completely dry in the second half in Munich. And that was it: We simply had nothing left in the tank for the game against Tottenham, and then again this week against Brighton. We had stretched too think, for too long, and finally snapped; everyone was just physically and mentally exhausted. Too many matches, not enough rest, end of story.

As I've said many times before, I just don't see how Skinner can be blamed. I don't think there is any manager in the world who could have done any better with what he had to work with. He isn't responsible for us having an insufficiently large/deep squad, nor for our bad luck with injuries. Indeed, I think it was an extraordinary accomplishment to get as far as we did in the WCL and to make it to the League Cup final.
 
Lobster11 said:
Sorry I'm late. I switched over to the WCL semifinal right after the final whistle and have been too busy to comment ever since. Anyway, here's my take....

I think this season has, unfortunately, played out exactly as we all should have been expected. The moment we finished top-three last season my first thought (besides "yay!") was, "be careful what you wish for." It was obvious to everyone in and around the game that our squad had nowhere near the size or depth to be able to compete in four competitions this year, and that consequently we might well fail in all of them. We did get some great signings in the summer, and then a few more in the winter break, but given the number of players who left or were otherwise unavailable the net squad size didn't actually increase by much. Then the situation was exacerbated by an unlucky rash of injuries, including Ella Toone for most of the second half of the season.

What I think we've seen over the last five or six weeks is the unfolding of a virtually inevitable scenario: We had been running on fumes for several weeks, trying to stay competitive by sheer grit and determination, until the tank finally ran completely dry in the second half in Munich. And that was it: We simply had nothing left in the tank for the game against Tottenham, and then again this week against Brighton. We had stretched too think, for too long, and finally snapped; everyone was just physically and mentally exhausted. Too many matches, not enough rest, end of story.

As I've said many times before, I just don't see how Skinner can be blamed. I don't think there is any manager in the world who could have done any better with what he had to work with. He isn't responsible for us having an insufficiently large/deep squad, nor for our bad luck with injuries. Indeed, I think it was an extraordinary accomplishment to get as far as we did in the WCL and to make it to the League Cup final.
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Well yes, but then again no!

You'll not be surprised to hear that I agree on the pressure of running multiple competitions with a small squad. I do question though how small a squad we had to run with. Were finances really so tight that we had to release any player who could get a loan deal - including any U21 within touching distance of the first team squad? I don't buy it. Our WCL additional earnings easily covered those young player costs. It's far more likely that as with Keira Barry a question about match time was asked and she was told that she wouldn't be getting any, so she chose to move on.

I'm not expecting huge changes on funding though I hope we make the effort to keep Ella Toone for example. But increased budget or not, is Skinner part of the problem or part of the solution? I see him as part of the problem - a signal that average is good enough.

We don't play attractive football. We don't compensate for that by playing tactically adept and effective football. Above all, we don't learn from experience or from what's happening live on the field. If it's not fixed by an individual player having a moment of brilliance or the team throwing every ounce of energy at the problem, things don't get fixed.

We play like we've got a caretaker manager hoping from week to week that the team will try harder, throw together some nice moves, get a break or that his boss will buy a miracle worker at the next transfer window. New players come and go (sometimes with scarcely any minutes played) but tactically we're as unimaginative and as naive as ever.
 
jojojo said:
Well yes, but then again no!

You'll not be surprised to hear that I agree on the pressure of running multiple competitions with a small squad. I do question though how small a squad we had to run with. Were finances really so tight that we had to release any player who could get a loan deal - including any U21 within touching distance of the first team squad? I don't buy it. Our WCL additional earnings easily covered those young player costs. It's far more likely that as with Keira Barry a question about match time was asked and she was told that she wouldn't be getting any, so she chose to move on.

I'm not expecting huge changes on funding though I hope we make the effort to keep Ella Toone for example. But increased budget or not, is Skinner part of the problem or part of the solution? I see him as part of the problem - a signal that average is good enough.

We don't play attractive football. We don't compensate for that by playing tactically adept and effective football. Above all, we don't learn from experience or from what's happening live on the field. If it's not fixed by an individual player having a moment of brilliance or the team throwing every ounce of energy at the problem, things don't get fixed.

We play like we've got a caretaker manager hoping from week to week that the team will try harder, throw together some nice moves, get a break or that his boss will buy a miracle worker at the next transfer window. New players come and go (sometimes with scarcely any minutes played) but tactically we're as unimaginative and as naive as ever.
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Yeah we could well sink back into the pack unless there is serious investment in the team and a new manager. Yes I know they are significantly funded, however look at the difference of City since sacking Taylor and replacing him with Jeglertz
 
jojojo said:
Well yes, but then again no!

You'll not be surprised to hear that I agree on the pressure of running multiple competitions with a small squad. I do question though how small a squad we had to run with. Were finances really so tight that we had to release any player who could get a loan deal - including any U21 within touching distance of the first team squad? I don't buy it. Our WCL additional earnings easily covered those young player costs. It's far more likely that as with Keira Barry a question about match time was asked and she was told that she wouldn't be getting any, so she chose to move on.

I'm not expecting huge changes on funding though I hope we make the effort to keep Ella Toone for example. But increased budget or not, is Skinner part of the problem or part of the solution? I see him as part of the problem - a signal that average is good enough.

We don't play attractive football. We don't compensate for that by playing tactically adept and effective football. Above all, we don't learn from experience or from what's happening live on the field. If it's not fixed by an individual player having a moment of brilliance or the team throwing every ounce of energy at the problem, things don't get fixed.

We play like we've got a caretaker manager hoping from week to week that the team will try harder, throw together some nice moves, get a break or that his boss will buy a miracle worker at the next transfer window. New players come and go (sometimes with scarcely any minutes played) but tactically we're as unimaginative and as naive as ever.
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I think we agree much more than we disagree. The only point of contention is how much blame to place on Skinner.

I agree that Skinner has become a "caretaker" manager over, say, the last six weeks or so -- whenever it was that the injury scourge reached its peak. Since then it's been all he can do to find XI ambulatory bodies to start each match and a handful to use as subs. He'has rested players as much as is physically possible to reduce the chances of even more injuries: For example, during short turnarounds, practice/prep for the next match has been reduced to film study and walk-throughs. Numerous players have had to play in non-preferred positions. He's just been trying to keep the boat afloat and avoid making matters worse.

But think back beyond those last six weeks or so: We were punching well above our weight and Skinner looked like a genius. (OK, I'll admit that "genius" might be a bit of an overstatement, but you get my point.) As of mid-February, we had won 10 of our 16 league matches, with 4 draws (one with Chelsea, two with Arsenal) and two losses (one to Chelsea). We were sitting second in the table for much of that time. In the WCL (including qualifying), before the tie against Bayern, we won 9 and lost 3, and finished 6th out of 18 teams in the league stage -- and then we played Bayern even through two matches minus the final ten minutes of the second leg. It took matches against Chelsea to knock us out of the other two domestic cups. It seems to me that we were performing well above any reasonable expectation until the injuries piled up, at which time Skinner had to adopt a caretaker role, and eventually the team collapsed under the dead weight of physical and psychological fatigue.
 
After ending our (slim) hopes for the WSL by holding us to a draw, Brighton have since done the same to Arsenal and beaten Liverpool away to reach the FA Cup final. This doesn't change the fact that our performance against them was sub-par, but it's a reminder that drawing Brighton away is nothing to be ashamed about.

On the downside, this serves as a painful reminder that while the three teams historically "above" us continue to improve -- the rich keep getting richer -- many teams "below" us are improving even more rapidly. Like the Red Queen, we're going to have to start running faster and faster just to stay in place.
 
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jojojo said:
Well yes, but then again no!

You'll not be surprised to hear that I agree on the pressure of running multiple competitions with a small squad. I do question though how small a squad we had to run with. Were finances really so tight that we had to release any player who could get a loan deal - including any U21 within touching distance of the first team squad? I don't buy it. Our WCL additional earnings easily covered those young player costs. It's far more likely that as with Keira Barry a question about match time was asked and she was told that she wouldn't be getting any, so she chose to move on.

I'm not expecting huge changes on funding though I hope we make the effort to keep Ella Toone for example. But increased budget or not, is Skinner part of the problem or part of the solution? I see him as part of the problem - a signal that average is good enough.

We don't play attractive football. We don't compensate for that by playing tactically adept and effective football. Above all, we don't learn from experience or from what's happening live on the field. If it's not fixed by an individual player having a moment of brilliance or the team throwing every ounce of energy at the problem, things don't get fixed.

We play like we've got a caretaker manager hoping from week to week that the team will try harder, throw together some nice moves, get a break or that his boss will buy a miracle worker at the next transfer window. New players come and go (sometimes with scarcely any minutes played) but tactically we're as unimaginative and as naive as ever.
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I agree with this viewpoint. Also don’t forget the money won from the World 7s last summer too.
I fear the likes of Spurs, LCL, Brighton, Villa will soon mean our battle will be for who finishes fourth rather than dreaming of those WCL spots again.
Skinner peaked with the FA Cup. He cannot take this squad further.
 
Scanny said:
I agree with this viewpoint. Also don’t forget the money won from the World 7s last summer too.
I fear the likes of Spurs, LCL, Brighton, Villa will soon mean our battle will be for who finishes fourth rather than dreaming of those WCL spots again.
Skinner peaked with the FA Cup. He cannot take this squad further.
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The big question is, who can? Given that we're potentially looking at another year where we're being massively outspent by our rivals.
 
Maestro14 said:
The big question is, who can? Given that we're potentially looking at another year where we're being massively outspent by our rivals.
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I hate to keep sounding like I'm Skinner's best friend, but I honestly don't believe that Emma Hayes could have gotten more out of our squad than he did this season. The gap in squad size and depth between us and the "Big Three" was just too big, so although we started out great we eventually (and predictably) succumbed to exhaustion. I just don't see what any manager could have done to prevent that. Changing the oil is going to make the car run any better if there is no gas (sorry, petrol) in the tank.
 
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