Manchester United Banter Archive November 03 2014

03 Nov 2014 19:50:11
Hi Guys

I have been encouraged with our last 2 performances against Chelsea and City and I still believe we will be in the top 4 come the end of the season.I think we will improve especially after Xmas but we do need to improve defensively.I am more optimistic than I was this time last year.Chelsea apart I think the rest of the league is going to be really tight both at the top and the bottom.

03 Nov 2014 15:59:39
Apparently Rojo will be out for at least 6 weeks but possibly 3 months with his shoulder injury. No immediate return for Jones or Evans and I am just not sure LVG has any faith in Smalling any more (although he may have little option to play him again)
Question is do we slot Carrick in there alongide one of the young guys or do we just have faith in McNair and Blackett and say that they will get the next few games to see what they are made of.
Palace, Arsenal, Hull, Stoke are the next 4 games. let's be honest could not do worse than currently. They could be assisted by playing Blind and Carrick just in front as holding midfielders and allow the rest to attack whilst defending from the front?

Would play Blackett and Mcnair against Palace with Carrick in front to shield them with and energetic midfield of Herrera Di Maria and Rooney

Better option I think would be be stick Blind in the Back with McNair he has more Exp as a CB than Carrick

Have Carrick sitting in front of the back 4 a role he is quite comfortable with with support from Herrera and Fellaini and DiMaria, Rooney and Falcao up front

Carrick with Blackett for me, would be nice to have some positive football coming from the back, especially at home against inferior opposition - both of these guys seem comfortable on the ball and would be good to get 90mins for Carrick.

His father has just come out and apparently said he is out for 2 maybe 3 games

Yes don't think Rojo will miss too many games. I would play McNair and Carrick at the back with Blind in front, or Blind at centre back and Carrick shielding. Where has Blackett disappeared to by the way?

Wont be surprised if suddenly jones or evans make a speedy recovery!

MBD
I expect both or at least one to play against Arsenal.

03 Nov 2014 12:40:30
What is wrong with our team? I really hope a top class defender is bought in Jan? Yes, we do have quality coming through, but we need it now! DDG - saviour!

03 Nov 2014 08:02:29
First 20 minutes I was very impressed, LVG had out thought Pellegrini tactically and our midfield were dominating, only problem was our passing was awful and just as we were starting to break them down a poor pass was placed, typically by Rooney during that time. Which meant we only created the one half chance for Januzaj.

20-25 - City should have scored twice and were tearing us apart, we lost a lot of confidence at this point and it was all hands to the deck. I'm not bothered about penalty shouts, they weren't given.

Smalling being dopey with 5mins or so until half time, masked a poor last half to the half for me.

Second half we battled well, City attempting to shut up shop after scoring like Chelsea did showed how low in confidence they are and how desperate Pellegrini was for the win. We huffed and puffed but just didn't have enough to break them down, commendable effort under the circumstances, but fully expected by any team in that situation 10 men or not.

I can't think of a time where a team losing 1-0 with 10mins to go didn't put the opposition under pressure to get an equaliser it is natural for the winning team to drop off and try to hold what they have, even against 10 men. So I don't think we should get too excited about our never say die attitude just yet - but we certainly looked like the team most likely to score next, despite the Yaya chance and Navas hitting the post.

ADM was very poor considering the high standards he has set. That's 3 games recently he has had little to no impact unfortunately, it is clear he needs to be central and have options ahead of him to free up space - RVP doesn't help him in the slightest and Shaw whilst good defensively didn't offer anything going forward, so it was predictable for ADM as he had no options - he needs to be in the middle or he is wasted.

Typical performance from Rooney despite playing slightly deeper than normal, moments of quality strength, power and excitement, but distribution pretty poor and doing his best stuff nowhere near the City goal as usual.

Fellaini - rarely gave the ball away, won it back, made himself available and had a cracking game. Shaw also did well defensively against Navas and obviously DDG made a couple of great saves again.

The rest did ok at times, didn't offer much, especially RVP who didn't lead the line at all well, even if you aren't getting the service you need to hassle and make moves for the ball, he was on his heels, barely moving when we had possession and basically a joy for the CB's to mark.

I knew the sending off would pretty much kill the game as a proper derby, it also masked a few things. Obviously its important to take positives, but we were certainly in trouble before Smalling was foolish, as expected at the Etihad.

The trouble is other teams have done better than us against them recently, I don't like this brigning up how we always get battered by City so this was much better. The form City were in they were for the taking, we could have really damaged them today, but didn't capitalise. Smalling will rightfully be made the scapegoat, but don't let it trick you into thinking we looked like winning that game, it was close but we were losing on points when he got sent off imo.

We need to batter Palace next weekend and start to gain some momentum, this group of players should not be where we are in the league.

{Ed001's Note - sorry, I just need to ask this, bearing in mind I think Shaw is going to be a top class player in the future, but why did you think Shaw did well defensively yesterday? Look at the amount of crosses Navas put in, Shaw struggled badly to stop them coming in, when he should have been forcing Navas to cut inside on his weak left foot. It was just lucky that Navas was wasting the opportunities to put the crosses into a dangerous area, in my opinion. To me, I would have to ask who was tasked with working with the defence in the run up to this game? Shaw should have received instructions, and been worked on it during the week, to show Navas inside at every opportunity. That would worry me, as it shows that someone isn't providing the players with enough details on how to play their opponents.

Just to give an idea of how much of a difference it can make having a coach giving instructions on how to play an opponent correctly, I only need to point to the example of Pepe Reina while he was being coached at Liverpool under Xavi Valero. He was keeping clean sheet after clean sheet, yes partly down to the defensive system Benitez employed, but also down to him showing the ability to make some top class saves to the point where there were a lot of people in Spain saying he deserved to be their first choice keeper. Then Valero left, almost overnight Reina became dodgy and was unable to make even the simplest saves. Valero would spend a lot of time working with Reina on how the opposition players would shape to shoot, the direction the ball would go if they leant this way or that way, which foot they favoured, the types of shot they liked to use etc etc. He would also spend time with the strikers, in particular Torres, coaching them on the opposition goalkeepers' and their weaknesses. So they would know if a particular keeper struggled to get down to his left or had a weak right wrist etc. Both those players looked like shadows of their previous ability after he left. Who is doing those things with United? Who is working with Shaw and instructing him not just how to improve his positioning, but how to best shut off an opponent?

Sorry for the long reply, I was trying to ensure people understood how much of a difference it can make having the right tactical coaching.}

Well said ed i completly agree with you. Sorry if iam wrong but i guess i read in an interview whr lvg mentioned that its ryan giggs job to prepare players for the matches.

{Ed001's Note - cheers Sid, I did think it was Giggs, but couldn't remember off the top of my head, so didn't want to accuse someone unfairly of not performing their role.}

Ed001 - Good points, but I think he did well under the circumstances, he was isolated and coped with the dual threat of Navas & Zabaleta extremely well in my view. I can't recall Zabaleta breaking through on the overlap as he usually does, he normally does better than almost anybody in the league, this was likely down to Shaw showing Navas out wide. City had no aerial presence with Jovetic and Aguero, so even if Shaw let Navas go out wide, the danger would have been limited with the cross, (lesser of 2 evils, as Zabaleta breaking forward would have been far more dangerous as the extra man). I don't know whether or not this would have been deliberate, maybe it was a case of the wrong decision paying off for him.

I think there are a hell of a lot of questions to be asked without doubt, but I thought Shaw did well yesterday, especially how poor the other defenders are he was playing with and Rooney, Fellaini, ADM didn't offer much on his side. City had Milner on the left who doesn't bring much as a winger, so their play was focussed down the right, not many chances came from that area.

The bigger issue tactically for me is what is the point of having 2 isolated wingers with just a static striker to target and why are we (Rooney) playing the same raking cross field ball which is easy to intercept leaving our players out of position and on the back foot, and even if it comes off there is nobody to benefit from it as we are so slow to move forward collectively, what do you think Ed001?

{Ed001's Note - I would have thought it better to have shown Navas inside and then pass him over to Blind, who should be in the side to do precisely that role when needed? Then Shaw covers against Zabaleta's runs while Navas is cut out of the game. I certainly wouldn't want a team with Yaya Toure's physical presence and height getting the freedom to cross the ball. Especially when Rojo has been shown to be inept aerially so far this season, though I would expect him to get better in that aspect as he gets used to the league.

It seemed to me that LVG was playing to stifle Yaya, with Rooney dropped so deep he was in midfield, mostly blocking space that Toure would usually use to make his marauding runs forward. Just as an aside, I thought Toure looked like a player who wanted to be elsewhere yesterday, making no effort to track back at all, it was an incredibly lazy performance from him. I would think that Rooney was seen as the most physical presence available to United, so he was dropped in there to try and battle for supremacy. For the early part of the game it would have worked, if Rooney would just look for a simple pass instead of those 40/50 yard balls every time. I don't see a problem with the set up, as a set up to stifle an opposition, but when you are Manchester United, is it good enough to be setting up to stifle your opponent? For me I am just not sure it is. As for the two wingers, Januzaj is not in there to look to cross the ball, but to get on it and cut inside, so it shouldn't be such an issue, so long as there are midfielders breaking forward.

The issue of Rooney's long ball is definitely the worry for me. It does expose you, as anyone breaking forward is being caught out, in a similar way to a goal West Brom scored (I can't remember whether it was against United or not now!), where Wisdom picked off a forward ball and charged into a huge gap left by the left sided players having gone forward. Rooney needs to stop trying to play them, instead he should be focusing on keeping possession, or he should be further up the pitch when he plays those kind of balls. I agree, the pace just isn't in the side at the moment for anyone to benefit from a quick launched ball forward.}

Nice one Ed001 some good points.

{Ed001's Note - cheers mate.}

Ed001

I missed 40 minutes of the first half but from what i saw in the second half, off course you are going to get caught out of position when we are chasing the game and pushing forward and losing possession. I think your analysis of shaw is flawed and looking for mistakes.

I would say the amount of time Navas was clearly in a better position and how shaw recovered was a testament to the player and he diffused so many dangerous situations.

BTW they scored from the other side and shaw for me is top top player for years to come. At 19 there is no one at his level. Show me a better left back at his age especially given what they are being asked to do by LVG.

The red card killed us and i would have bet 11 against 11 we would have had them on the ropes the longer the game went.

{Ed001's Note - he was no better before then and it was nothing to do with pushing on, he simply never got close to Navas, even when he was back. You know I rate Shaw highly, but he did not play well at all, he offered little going forward either. Like I said, I would question how he was being instructed to play, rather than his play as such. A young lad like that should be getting told how to deal with an opponent.}

Many good points made well and an interesting read.

I wouldn't go so far as to disagree with Ed as tbh I watch United as a fan and only keep a mental note of things I remember annoying me and am otherwise caught up in the emotion of the game. but I'm sure I remember thinking Shaw did well to cut out a fair amount of attempted crosses even when he started as second favourite.

Emotion aside, the biggest annoyance for me was Rooney's repeated cross field pass attempts. I'd understand if should any of them have come off they'd have lead to a good chance, but for me they were all bigger risk than reward and midfield (+ football in general) is about percentages.

Ps
I've changed my mind slightly on one small point re: letting Naval go wide and that is that I'd be less scared of Yaya trying to get his head on the end of a cross than being t'd up for a 25 yard strike when he becomes free whilst everyone hands over their marker to accommodate Shaw passing Navas on to Blind whilst tracking Pablo Z. Swings and roundabouts.

{Ed001's Note - good points, but a well drilled team, which United should be by now, should be able to work out how to cope with a winger being forced inside. If they aren't capable of doing so, then I would be wondering what the coaching staff are doing all week! It is a standard way of dealing with a winger who wants to go on the outside, especially when playing a narrow midfield, which United have done a few times this season. If you send them outside, and you are playing a narrow diamond, you give them space and time, if you send them inside, you force them into what should be an area packed with bodies, making it difficult for them to do anything. If Blind is being set to man mark Yaya in a match, then who is being drilled to cover? After all, this is City we are talking about, and, other than Navas, their wide players all like to cut inside, so the team should have been drilling in dealing with that constantly. Which is another reason I think sending Navas inside makes sense, because the team should be set up to cope with wide players cutting inside, due to most of them doing so.}