03 Oct 2013 08:51:19
A few people have been mentioning that Carrick is a weak link and having watched him even more carefully this season I couldn't agree more.

Whilst he looks good on the ball, he does everything so far back that we are always light further forward, so we end up with less players moving up front and therefore a major lack of options. He also just dangles a toe in when defending, and he wasn't on a yellow yesterday. I thought that was the reason he was doing it against WBA - man up Carrcik!

Our midfield with Fellaini, Cleverley and Carrick is just so one dimensional it is unbelievable, like they are playing against a wall. They all want to collect the ball off the CB's and then expect there to be options for a killer ball, but because everybody aside from the isolated striker is also wanting to receive it 5 yards from the back four we end up just pratting around with the ball being totally ineffectual, then lump it long to our one option who is swamped by 4-5 defensive players.

We need to see Anderson, Kagawa, Januijaz in the team, they add mobility and trust themselves to receive the ball in the oppositions half and don't look backwards every time they get it. They may be a bit rusty and give it away a bit, but at least they play with attacking intent and will improve.

Last night was hard work to watch, sending me to sleep, and Shakhter were rubbish. Commentators going on about how nobody from England have beaten them at home etc so it's a good result, but they have lost half their team and are full of players hardly anybody has heard of now.

I honestly think that half the prem teams would have beaten them and the rest would have gotten a draw at least and definitely all of them would have played better than we did last night.

RVP, Valencia, Welbeck, Fellaini, Cleverley, Carrick - what did they do going forward? RVP kept giving it away as well, probably due to lack of options again.

Sunderland is going to be a difficult game if we play the same system. Horrible.

1.) 03 Oct 2013
I cannot believe the amount of people on here who expected anything different than last night's result. No matter what you say MrSween Shakhtar is a tough place to go. The game was always going to be a bore and away games in Europe always have been in the past. I knew what to expect last night and it happened the exact same way.

2.) 03 Oct 2013
If you look at Shakhtars home record in CL not many teams win there. its a good result a draw

3.) 03 Oct 2013
That's my point - "If you look at who we are playing", who are we playing? It's like saying if you look at Liverpool's record in the Champions League it's a hard match, no it isn't it's just their history that makes it seem difficult - half their current team have done nothing in the Champions League.

I hate all this rubbish about judging how difficult a game will be based on their history. Especially as teams change so much in the space of 12 months, and not always because of players coming and going - Shakhtar have lost their equivalent in quality to Rooney, RVP and Vidic, yet we still think it's a good result.

We played at 20% of our ability, so how is getting a draw good, 30% and we would have won 1-0?

If you put Shakhtar into our league they would finish 12th-15th.

Fulham drew there a few years ago, so is it a good result that we are as good as Fulham with this same mentality?

We were awful again and a draw against Shakhtar was not a good result based on a game of football, maybe it was on a year old paper, but not from watching the actual game.

4.) 03 Oct 2013
Syd - I knew what to expect, but I was hoping for better. The very fact that 99% of us fans could see what was going to happen before it happened is disgusting, especially when they were for the taking.

It's going to be a season of great frustration but it will all come good next year.

5.) 03 Oct 2013
While I agree to the point that a draw away at shakhtar isn't a bad result I totally disagree with all the pundits in respect that united were cr*p we never looked like scoring all game and only did because of a mistake and to say we defended well is also cr*p we were hanging on for 90 minutes with desperate defending we have gone from a quick breaking team with swagger to one which has no identity we do not break quick anymore we don't counter attack we don't hold on to the ball we don't shoot, pass or tackle we are now a mid table team while it is not all moyes fault as this is the squad he was left he hasn't really helped himself with bad team selections and bad tactics we we need a major overhaul of players as rio, evra, young, smalling, valencia, fellaini, cleverly, anderson, nani, giggs and wellbeck are not good enough for a starting place but that is what we have and I don't think moyes is the right man to sort it out the manager I personally would like to see is AVB

6.) 03 Oct 2013
Red79

Mate, if we have a bad enough season that sees Moyes sacked, that would mean Spurs would finish above us - why would AVB go to a team that finished below his current club? Especially because the United job, by then, would be considered a poison chalice that top managers would not want to risk taking.

7.) 03 Oct 2013
AVB has done nothing yet.

8.) 03 Oct 2013
Apart from winning the UEFA cup