Premier League 2018/19

[The Lusophone]

Sack him.

[Matt]

Nah this is way more fun.

 

[The Lusophone]

Spoiler

 

Why is Ander Herrera playing centreback. Why. Why. Why.

[Noah]

Quote

 

"For the team to fight the way they did, with empathy, with solidarity and dignity to play together for Manchester United... one thing is clear: the team is united."

Jose Mourinho post match

 

 

[TCO]

Smelling stepping out to play offside while Herrera was about 10 yards behind him playing everyone on for that 2nd goal was hilarious.

You can't just slot a lad into centre back at the highest level and expect him to have the positional ability succeed there.

[Jimmy]

But it was working in the first half. United were, by far, the better team in the first half. We barely had a sniff, although I thought we should've had a pen. 

We just sorted ourselves out in the second half and were wonderful. Poch handled Lucas' integration so well and it looks like we've got a real player there, he offers us something different being lightning quick and having that low centre of gravity. Really wonderful result, love our team. 

[MDK]

[FLiam]

Any idea who the guy sitting next to Woodward is? 

[Baddar]

Looks like Mad Jack to me.

[Noah]

Man this United facebook group I'm in, is a mess.

You've got the guys at the top end (longest serving/most active posters) believing it's best that Jose goes and majority of those guys being angry at the state of the  club, then you've got a few saying it's too early to make that decision especially when we played the best game we'd played in a while against Spurs and who are also pointing to how we've progressed steadily under Jose and then you've got a swathe of newbies who are as angry as the guys at the top end but blame Woodward and are calling every fan who wants Jose gone disloyal glory hunters.

Edited August 29, 2018 by Noah

[stokeriño]

51 minutes ago, Noah said:

Man this United facebook group I'm in, is a mess.

You've got the guys at the top end (longest serving/most active posters) believing it's best that Jose goes and majority of those guys being angry at the state of the  club, then you've got a few saying it's too early to make that decision especially when we played the best game we'd played in a while against Spurs and who are also pointing to how we've progressed steadily under Jose and then you've got a swathe of newbies who are as angry as the guys at the top end but blame Woodward and are calling every fan who wants Jose gone disloyal glory hunters.

So pretty much the standard range of responses then.

"Well, at least you're not in plane banner territory (yet)." IS WHAT I JUST TYPED OUT and then I went to Google and oh for fuck's sake.

[MDK]

(Calmly) think they should stick with Jose. You don't get anywhere in this game through knee-jerk decisions.

[Baddar]

Yaya Toure has passed a medical in London, but it's not West Ham as he's a champion, and "last place is not for him". 

Top bants. 

[stokeriño]

So Charlton, then.

[Lineker]

He's in charge of picking up crisp packets.

[Sam]

To be fair to Mourinho, he opened his team up and we were all over Spurs for the first 30 mins, if Lukaku scored the two chances he should have (clean through and a header in a lot of space) then it would have been a different story. 

Personally think he needs to stick with the system and give it time, I bet he regrets selling Blind now as he could have easily slotted in where Herrera was and done the job fine, perhaps he believed that we would be replacing Blind with a centre back. I think the scoreline made the result look worse than it was, the comical all over the place defending certainly didn't help us but it was to be expected when considering it's a new formation against a top 4 team with players that haven't been playing suddenly thrown in as the other two mucked up at Brighton.

Edited August 29, 2018 by Sam

[Hobo]

Clearly, Yaya is off to Daganhem and Redbridge 

[Lineker]

Mourinho should definitely stick with it and get given plenty of time!

[Gazz]

14 minutes ago, Sam said:

 Personally think he needs to stick with the system and give it time

On this point, what is his system?

I don't claim to be a football expert but I have enough knowledge of the game that I can watch a couple of games of football and work out what a manager's system is in terms of philosophy, defensive and attacking formations, reaction to transitions, and individual roles, duties and combinations. For example, I could fairly easily right now off the top of my head explain generally to you what Pep and Klopp's systems are and what they entail for each individual player and the different phases of play. I couldn't do that for Man Utd, except for like I said during the match on Monday, in the last twenty minutes, the system becomes 'sub on Fellaini to play as a deep-lying target man and pump lofted balls up to him in the D for knock downs and flick ons' or a very simplistic 'it's a deep block counter-attacking 4-3-3 with Lukaku, Mata and Alexis as the front three, only one of which has anything even remotely resembling the pace needed to perform a counter attack'.

[Sam]

17 minutes ago, Gazz said:

On this point, what is his system?

I don't claim to be a football expert but I have enough knowledge of the game that I can watch a couple of games of football and work out what a manager's system is in terms of philosophy, defensive and attacking formations, reaction to transitions, and individual roles, duties and combinations. For example, I could fairly easily right now off the top of my head explain generally to you what Pep and Klopp's systems are and what they entail for each individual player and the different phases of play. I couldn't do that for Man Utd, except for like I said during the match on Monday, in the last twenty minutes, the system becomes 'sub on Fellaini to play as a deep-lying target man and pump lofted balls up to him in the D for knock downs and flick ons' or a very simplistic 'it's a deep block counter-attacking 4-3-3 with Lukaku, Mata and Alexis as the front three, only one of which has anything even remotely resembling the pace needed to perform a counter attack'.

Well we were two down at that point and he had already switched the formation back to usual by bring Sanchez on. Fellaini as the masterplan when we're losing has been a problem we've had for far too many years now.

The system that we started with was what I was referring to and I think the system he wants to play this year judging by what he has been saying about needing another centre back and formations in pre-season is 5 at the back with the wingbacks providing support, Pogba, Matic Fred in midfield with Lingard/Sanchez/Rashford behind Lukaku. Fred and Lingard provided the energy and the pressing and Spurs struggled with it for the first half hour and we actually looked somewhat fluid in our football (seldom can that be said) just unfortunately it wasn't sustained. (Probably due to the number of players starting their first game, the amount of changes, 6 players brought in, the sudden tactical switch, playing a player out of position).

It was completely different to what anybody was expecting, I for one was expecting a tight dogged performance with a very narrow midfield and Herrera basically man marking Erikson or Ali. The problem with the system is that at this point in time we don't have the players for it, although the same can be said of our 4-3-3 where we lack a right winger and use Mata instead and the left wing is a rotation of underperfoming players in Sanchez, Martial and Rashford. 

I personally felt the style of football was better, more befitting of United and that he just needs to stick with it rather than chucking it away to grind out results, one of the reasons United fans are so tired of him. I still can't quite fathom how we haven't strengthened our defence though over the years as you think back to the Van Gaal game at Leicester where our weak defence was brutally exposed and yet years later here we are talking about pretty much the same personnel being poor.