26 Mar 2014 11:27:59
I had an interesting thought last night and with a little research this morning I have come to this conclusion.

Last season we didn't play great football, and we also lost games against teams we probably shouldn't have, but the main difference between this season and last season is we won the games that mattered.

If you look at the results between us and the likes of City, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal and Spurs. These are the teams that will challenge us for the top spots in the league. This season in the league we have lost 6 drawn 3 and won only once against these teams, and the result is we are now sitting in 7th place.

If we won all our games against those teams the top of the table would look like this:

United 75
Chelsea 63
Arsenal 61
Liverpool 59
City 57
Everton 57
Spurs 52

We would be out in front by 12 points with 7 games to go, Now I don't expect us to win all those games but we should win the majority of them and if we had done that this season then we would now be on course to win another title regardless of our poor performances and our new manager.

That is the difference between this season and last, winning the games against the top sides.

This brings me to my main point, if we want to get back into contention again then we need to win games against our closest rivals. Unfortunately if you look at David Moyes record against the top teams you'll soon see that he rarely gets a result against them in over 12 years of management in the premier league. He's managed in over 140 games against the top teams in England and he has won less than 10% of those games against those teams.

The reason for this came straight out of his mouth after the game yesterday, when interviewed by sky after the game he went on to say how he set the team up to try and restrict City and stop them playing, then said oh and we need to try and score to.

This shows his emphasis is to try to not lose against the top teams rather than how we can expose their weaknesses. He is a reactive manager not a proactive manager and as such he will always struggle against the top teams and as such we will struggle against them the whole time he is our manager.

This shows yet long term he isn't the right man for the job.

1.) 26 Mar 2014
The shocking truth shappy is you need 7 or 8 new players, the fergie factor is gone, refs are not afraid anymore to give the correct calls in a game, also teams have learned to have a go against utd, I always got the feeling a lot of sides never put up a real fight against utd at old trafford, and they just rolled over when playing there, fergie should of went after the barca defeat in the champions leauge final, and let a young fresh manager take over with new ideas, fergie was happy keeping the transfer funds low, and the glazers happy, you are suffering now as a result of all this, even leting ferge pick a mate for the managers job, instead of who would be the best choice.

2.) 26 Mar 2014
Lfc - Mostly fair points but I disagree about the ref's giving fair calls thing. It is a myth that other fans like to use as an excuse for our previous dominance. I can refer you to various 'fairness tables' on the internet where they make a new premier league table based on referees making the correct calls in every game and in every single one I have seen Man United would have been higher than their actual position. Other than that everything else you say is pretty much spot on.

3.) 26 Mar 2014
You are right . lfc except I haven't been as cruel as to suggest any more than 5/6 new players. Other stuff is spot on

4.) 26 Mar 2014
RedRosie is spot on with the fact that it wasn't the referees who won us those titles which is a silly notion so many fans from opposition clubs cling to just so they don't have to admit that over the last 20 years United have just been the better team, whether that was because they had better players or a better manager is another matter though. Personally I feel that they had both, but the manager was the deciding factor and separated the teams when the players were evenly matched.

Lfc, no one is debating that we need new players, that was evident over the last few seasons. It had become clear that the reckless take over by the Glazers and the global collapse of world financial sector in 08 had a very significant effect on our ability to compete for the best players in the world, add into that the sudden influx of money into some clubs making them recession proof and meaning that suddenly there were other teams pushing the price of players up at a time when United couldn't afford for player prices to be inflated has had a very significant impact on our ability to bring in and build the strongest squad.

When Abramovic first took over Chelsea, he handed Kenyon and bucket load of cash to jump ship, he then went on to sign several players we had all but signed players such as Robban and Essien. Then City as well as PSG have also come in with outsider money and stopped us from signing players who would probably be in our squad now had they not gained the investment into their clubs when they did.

This is not me whinging or bitching these are factors which have directly lead to us having the substandard squad we currently have.

So there is no one here who will disagree that we need at least 5/6 world class players in the summer and probably 1/2 top squad players as well.

But my point is more about the captain of the ship rather than its crew. A great leader can make up for deficiencies within the squad, but a poor leader will bring the quality and capabilities of the squad down.

Look at your own ship, and your own players. How much better are they playing under Rodgers than they were under Hodgeson? Look at Jordan Henderson? He was a joke under your former manager but is now one of your top performers. That is the difference a great manager can make.

Now if we look at United last season and this season the performance of key players has got worst this season, and that is directly down to the manager.

Moyes is unable to get these players to play at their best, this is due to several factors imo, first they don't trust his tactics which are negative and don't play to the strengths of the collective players, second he lacks the personality to get them motivated, I have never seen such a deflated United side playing against Liverpool or City. He needs to go, and the longer we drag this out the longer the road back to the top will be.
He's a nice bloke, but nice blokes rarely win titles.

5.) 26 Mar 2014
The main point is shappy, the philosophy of fergie is incredibly hard to replace, he had such an effect on his own players, the refs, other teams managers, you could feel the fear in other teams, indeed to take nothing away from utd, some of the lower premership sides maybe did indeed just write this fixture off, as a loss when playing at old trafford, and thought we will make the points up elewhere, now its like the players are in the real world playing sides that fight back, and the utd players realise they don't have the upper hand anymore- ie fergie in thier corner.

6.) 26 Mar 2014
I think most of the lower premier league teams look at the away fixtures against all the top sides as a great day out but with very little to no expectancy of getting anything. none of the teams that finish in the bottom half expect to win at Old Trafford, but they didn't expect to win at Anfield or Stamford Bridge or the Emirates or the Etihad. Most newly promoted teams and teams that's main ambition was not to get relegated went to those grounds in hope rather than expectancy.

Sir Alex did have an effect on opposition managers but that was built over many years of success, no one feared him when he took over in 1986. But after many years of proving himself and repeatedly rebuilding a winning team other managers probably did begin to fear him and rightly so.

We always knew it was going be tough when he stepped aside as quite frankly there isn't anyone else able to step in and offer what he could, that security, that knowledge and that unbelievable drive to win at any cost.

But that doesn't mean that this season had to be a complete write off. Yes it was going to be tough, and yes you'd have had to be a bit fool hardy to have expected United to seriously challenge for the title this season.

But its not fool hardy to have expected the new man to have a vision and a plan going forward, its not fool hardy to expect to see him implementing his own style onto the team and its not fool hardy to have a squad of champions to at least be competitive in 95% of the games.

The only thing Moyes has done is implement his fearful and negative approach to our players which has had the obvious negative result.

He has no plan on how he will try and improve the team, the performances or even what style he hopes to build the team in.

I mean does he want to play possession or counter attacking football? High pressing or deep lying? does he want zonal or man to man marking? Does he want to play with width or in a more compact way?

He has no vision or plan for how he wants the team to play and he seems to change his mind depending on who we are playing.

You don't see top teams doing that, they have a style and a way of playing and they play their own game.

Barca play high pressing possession based game.

Chelsea play a more compact fast breaking game.

Bayern play with width to stretch play then cut in and over load the box.

Dortmund play a relentless pressing game.

Liverpool play an open attacking game based around pace and pressing.

City play a controlled probing game.

Everyone has an identity, a style and a consistency in their approach. And as such they gain a consistency in their results.

At the moment we have no identity no style and no vision for the future.

David Moyes has been given more than enough time to find his feet and work out which direction he wants the club to go, and yet he is still dithering and going with a scatter gun approach.

In reality he just doesn't know what he's doing and is massively out of his depth. It is far better to cut our loses now before we spend too long in the footballing wilderness.

7.) 26 Mar 2014
Shappy

We do have an identity, we like to lose at home and win away :)

I think we will break the league record for away points if we keep going:)