Manchester United Banter Archive December 16 2017

16 Dec 2017 18:12:41
I'm watching City tear Spurs apart and thinking who do I want to win. On the one hand I won't be upset if one of our principle competitors for the top 3 loses points, but on the other do I want City to continue their stunning unbeaten run. I'll settle for a draw, but, frankly that's looking far less likely than it did when we played them.

16 Dec 2017 18:33:38
What's horrible for me is seeing them missing top players and the ones coming in look just as good, players like Delph and Gundogan look like world beaters, Fernandinho has gone up another level as well, one of the best in the world now. As much as it hurts they are great to watch, Sane looks immense today as well with De Bruyne playing like the ball is his minion.

Hard to believe Pep has had less time than Jose, they are destroying everyone at the minute - he has worked his magic very quickly. Only points they have dropped are against Everton and even in that game I remember Walker getting sent off early (dream team damage) .

16 Dec 2017 19:18:25
However I think it puts our performance without Pogba, Bailly and Jones into perspective. They may have been the better team, and they undoubtedly have incredible depth, but we still had opportunities at the end our game to tie or win it, which is much more than can be said for Tottenham and the much vaunted Pochettino. We may yet be a fait ways off perfection, but I don't think anyone can doubt the improvement we have experienced since Mourinho inherited what was relatively a poor squad with a poor mentality, compared to the one Pep got. And that doesn't even take into account that they have spent even more than we have on top of the initial advantage.

16 Dec 2017 19:41:39
Got to remember who the home team were though Shaw.

I hardly think Spurs are the benchmark as well, City and our history should be.

16 Dec 2017 20:03:19
“Hard to believe Pep has had less time than Jose”

Pep was confirmed as City Manager in Feb 16,Jose as United Manager in May 16, but did I miss something?

16 Dec 2017 20:51:58
And pep has spent 100m more red man.

16 Dec 2017 21:38:35
beast on cloud cuckoo land most of the time.

16 Dec 2017 21:54:08
Im no football genius manager but watching City play and being entertaining I am seeing them misplacing very few passes, when they lose the ball they win it back very quickly and more tellingly they have players that love dribbling.

Just like kanchelskis, ronaldo, giggs, once you go past one, two players as an attacker your attack now should have a numerical advantage over the defenders if your teamates have kept up with you. simple really . Or it was when we were doing the same years ago.

16 Dec 2017 22:03:41
That was when they were announced Red Man - Jose was on the cards way before imo, but great fact checking, cheers. I think he was managing us for a few years before with a big Dutch mask on.

Nevertheless - compare the two teams and when they actually started in the role, I think we can all agree we took the wrong road.

16 Dec 2017 22:15:44
Beast. The point of my comment was that there have been many on here that think Pochettino should be our manager rather than Mourinho. And while we did have home advantage last weekend I don't think that takes away much from the comparison. Compared to where we were, and the mismatched squad we have when Jose took over, we are doing well, and we've spent less than City in the process. It is unfortunate that City have soared to another level. We will see if our club has the ability to respond to the challenge.

16 Dec 2017 22:24:45
Well done beast, don't let the truth get in the way of a good old rant 😂.

17 Dec 2017 02:18:51
haha yeah I suppose, let me go back and amend to "same amount of time", splitting hairs is what we do best I suppose.

Shaw - I do think Poch would do a better job with our resources than Jose is doing but I think we should go elsewhere. We have improved, but have we improved enough? I think Pep has improved City from where they were to where they are much farther than where Jose has taken us in the same time - we look much further away than City than we did last season. Most of us will look at the squad and say that there are a lot of areas that need work, should that be the case after X amount of money spent and 3 windows behind him, some maybe but as many as we have? City had similar problems and addressed them all, also re-galvanised players that seemed not good enough. Our not good enough players have remained at the same of worse level, Pep has improved his.

17 Dec 2017 03:49:55
Well in absolute terms, compared to last year we're 8 points better off having scored 13 more goals and conceded 6 fewer. If this were to continue we would score 80 and end up with abut 82 points, which would have been enough to win the title in some seasons. Obviously we need to be better if we want to compete with this City team which has made a stunning turn around from last year when they underperformed and won nothing, despite still having a great team on paper. And while we all wish we were playing football the way they are, and have to begrudgingly acknowledge what's happening over there, it doesn't take away from what has been achieved on our side of the city by Mourinho who took on a club devoid of belief in itself and riddled with hubris.

17 Dec 2017 06:21:36
Beast you supporting the wrong club? Fancy City or Spurs. I am sure there is a page for those two teams too. This is a page for the United faithful and not for closet city supporters.

17 Dec 2017 07:16:16
Beast you remind of SAF famous statement about the neighbors cow. Take it easy we have progressed immensely from where we were 18 months ago. It takes a long time to build a team and phase in players and phase out players.

Weekly knee jerk reactions to games is not how you build a dynasty. We are on our way to having one when you look at the talented young core of this team.

I picked city to win and us finishing second in Tony's pre season thing. I am not surprised by city leading the league although surprised by the points total. Pep has gotten all his pieces in and its funny that i had completely forgotten about Gundogan being there given the wealth off options and choices he has.

Bernardo silva which was the chief architect of a great Monaco team last season is a bench warmer purchased for I think 40 mill. This city team can field 2 teams and still pretty darn good and that is how deep they are. Even Aguero is not guaranteed starts which says something.

17 Dec 2017 08:06:06
Won’t b churlish and deny that Pep doing something very special but, in terms of team evolution, he started with a much more settled and stronger team than Jose, who was handed an interesting bag of players who were very disillusioned after VG and Moyes. Not only did he need more time to bring in players but he had to restore the dresssing room as well as reorganise other parts of the club.

Pep has come in and fine tuned, like he did with Barcelona and Bayern - the majority of the hard work had been done for him, all he had to do was sprinkle a bit of magic.

17 Dec 2017 09:15:22
Wallace. Pep has bought in three full backs, 2 midfielders, 2 attackers, two goalkeepers (one of them is rubbish) . Is that fine tuning?
We've got a Hodge podge of players and a lot are playing out of position. And whose fault is that?

17 Dec 2017 09:49:41
Attack

I think your numbers are way off bud. Ha has added 14 players to a squad who finished 2nd before he arrived and had silva, auguero, de bruyne, kompany. I will try and sit them for you.

1. Gundogan, Sane, Bernardo Silva, Mendy, Walker, Stones, Jesus, Ederson, Sterling, Delph, Zinchenko, Otamendi, Bravo, Nolito.

Thats a whole new team bud lol.

17 Dec 2017 10:23:27
Isn't city's youth team suppose to be out of this world according to people here and way ahead of us. Would welcome feedback.

How come not a single kid has been given the chance and if this was happening at United people would be screaming murder.

17 Dec 2017 12:56:12
X Files - if we were playing like City there would be very very few comments on here about why aren't we playing any ex Youth players. If we won the league without one ex Youth team player nobody would be complaining. In my opinion the days of several players coming right through our Youth set up are long gone, success hungry fans have seen to that, look at the criticism on here that Rashford gets at times. Sad as it is and traditions are great but success is the only way things are measured in modern football.

17 Dec 2017 13:27:23
Keanooh,

I think a lot of people would be complaining, a youth team member in every match day squad for about 80 years I believe? Something a lot of us are very proud of.

16 Dec 2017 04:21:10
Just a little comment I want to make about a trend that annoys me and whilst things are a little slow leading into the weekend:

Carrick has to be the most talked about "under rated" player of all time, almost every week I read about how "unnoticed" his quality and contribution has been. It really winds me up, he has been a good player, a good servant, but nothing more. The reason he hasn't been hyped is because there have been many better players than him, simples. I like him, value his contribution but this recent fad of over hyping the "unsung hero" is ridiculous, not everyone can be a sung about hero or deserves to be - it belittles the excellence of the sung about hero.

Carrick was and has always been the tier below the best, over praise is why we are in this mess, too quick to praise decent and too slow to slam poor.

So can we please stop saying he is an unsung hero because every Utd fan will rate him and has given him ample praise over the years when it has been due. But he isn't in the top echelons, just like Nicky Butt, Dennis Irwin and Gary Neville.

Just my Friday night rant.

16 Dec 2017 05:33:47
In what mess? 2nd in the league and still in all the cups, what a disaster.

16 Dec 2017 05:53:23
Too many average players GDS2. One or two may work out but most do not.

16 Dec 2017 06:22:01
Merry Christmas to you too Beast. I am one who has talked about Carrick being underrated but that doesn’t mean I think he has been world class. My beef is with people who write players like Carrick off and ignore their contribution. He has been a very good player for us over many years and for a spell SAF said he was the first name on the team sheet; it’s easy to forget that now he is coming to the end of his career. Yes he wasn’t a Gerard,
Lampard, or Scholes but his class is often ignored. Saying someone is underrated does not mean they are a worldie, it means they are under appreciated.

I don’t think we can have a world class player in ever position, building a team is difficult and when you look at some of our most successful teams we had a number of players who were not at that top level but did very well for us. As for the players you named, Neville would have broke the England caps record if he hadn’t got injured, and Irwin was incredible for us over many years.

Interestingly, my issue is the opposite to yours, with players everyone raves about when I just don’t see it. Martial is a prime example. Yes he has huge talent and ability but he rarely shows it and in most games is a 7/ 10 at best.

16 Dec 2017 06:57:19
AJH - But who has ever written Carrick off or been overly critical?

It's like people think "hmm I haven't heard his name mentioned in a while so I have to go out of my way to highlight how important he is".

Players like Carrick and Neville have been great steady eddy's, you need them of course, Valencia is another one at the minute. I also agree with you about the over-hype of fluff players, Depay was my pet hate as he signed, too many people raving about him and I couldn't see the fuss, similar to Lukaku as well in a different way. It doesn't have to be one or the other, I just think Carrick gets this "unsung hero" thing more than genuine hero's get hero.

It's like so many fans are looking for the out of the box praise for a player and Carrick always seems to be the go-to guy. He has been a 7/ 10 player one maybe two seasons he was 8/ 10. So he is sung about enough in my book, too much in my view because too many people want to seem "astute" when saying how great he is. Matic will be the next one when Carrick retires. I even heard it about Fletcher a lot as well, who is another that did ok at best, but nothing special.

16 Dec 2017 08:18:24
Beast,

I felt the same when Lukaku was signed. I’ve never been. A fan of his as he is cumbersome. Admittedly he did score a lot of goals for Everton but he’s never done it at the top.
I agree with you about average players we have in the squad.
However we are 2nd in the league, theough to the next stages of the CL and still in the league cup. We have improved on last season. Man City had a better squad whenGuardiola took over. It will take another summer transfer window to finish our squad.

Merry Xmas you filthy animal ;)

16 Dec 2017 09:23:39
We are not in a “mess”, however things could and should have been a lot better if only we had owners who didn’t plunge us into totally unnecessary debt channelling funds away from the real issues and had formed a proper transition plan to move on from SAF. It has nothing to do with levels of praise.

16 Dec 2017 11:00:41
Carrick is awesome. Always has been. You don’t year’s at United if you’re crap.

Merry Christmas Scrooge. Have fun.

16 Dec 2017 13:09:51
we could do with a 25 year old Carrick now, we would have some midfield then he has been excellent.

16 Dec 2017 14:29:20
Step away from the green and gold scarf red man 😂.

16 Dec 2017 14:51:06
I disagree about Carrick, he was excellent for us.

I also disagree about Gary Neville, for me he was amongst the best in the world in his position, better defensively than Cafu, Thuram was better defensively but not attacking enough. Lahm was better than him when he was at the end of his career. He was incredible with Becks down the right.

16 Dec 2017 15:19:02
Agreed beast and ajh. I think Carrick has been a fantastic player for us but he's not world class level. I also think that most of our players are overrated. Agree with ajh about Martial.
Ddg and pogba apart, non of the rest are going to walk into Barcelona or Madrid teams.

16 Dec 2017 15:29:21
Carrick in the barcelona team wouldn't hav3 looked out of place, Gary Neville was a top player as well.

16 Dec 2017 15:47:11
Well that made me laugh.

16 Dec 2017 15:51:00
Disagree beast. Guardiola said last season how he rated Carrick very highly and that he would have not looked out of place in barcelona’s Team. If he was Spanish or Italian he would be appreciated a lot more highly. Just because he does not charge around and score goals means he is not rated as highly. His passing range was brilliant and he has a very good footballing brain.

16 Dec 2017 16:33:24
Carrick or biscuits, I know who I would rather have. and he hails from Teesside.

16 Dec 2017 19:51:53
Deanob

Take a look at what we might have done with the multi millions wasted in interest and charges. People have lost sight of what had happened off the field, allowed the owners publicity machine to soften what they have done to the club. I am not Kloot so don’t take his extremes but I recognise that we had a chance to cement our position at the top however missed it because we were replacing Ronaldo with Wigan’s winger. Real Madrid would not have accepted this at their club but too many of us did.

16 Dec 2017 20:04:47
Deano1210

I can assure you that was a typo and not meant in any way.

16 Dec 2017 20:52:41
So you say red man lol 😁😁😁.

16 Dec 2017 20:54:00
Haha, I did wonder Red Man!

17 Dec 2017 11:36:48
Bloody hell Redman that's a bit strong 😂😂

Only joshing mate I'll be honest I'm only looking at what we have achieved rather than what could have been. Could be worse mate Mike Ashley could be our owner.