[arthurka]

Why didn´t anyone see this coming?
We have been terrible for long spells away this season and last for that matter..

Finally quick clicking passing and desire to drive came to bite us in the ass this was the senario vs Soton but we got away with that. In that game we couldn´t string together 3 passes between us in the first 25 min and should have been 3-0 down. Even after we got into 3-1 they hammered us for the last 15 minutes and we scrapped to a 3-2 win. Swansea was the same we had decent control until they started to press us in the second half we collapsed..

If anyone think we will be any different vs Everton they are fooling themselves, if they hit their stride vs us and they will we are truly and surely fecked.

Not to take anything from Arsenal who played perfectly against us for the first 25 min, Wenger has been taking notes how terrible we are away from home and cooked up a perfectly executed plan to put us in our place!

 

[Manchester_Man]

The central midfield pairing along with Wayne Rooney killed. They won the game in the midfield. We needed Morgan for his mobility and the defensive side of his game.

I agree with this, I also think its time to drop Rooney to the bench and give him a chance to come on and influence games rather than continue to play him week in week out when his confidence is shot.

 

[crossy1686]

This is a knee jerk, mainly due to the fact that Liverpool are acting on their poor performances and replacing their manager with a better one, coupled with the fact that if I have to continue watching this tepid possession football I'll die of boredom, we should see who's available at the end of the season, manager-wise. If Ancelotti is still looking for a job we should give him a go or at least see if Pep's interested. I'd even be willing to give Klopp a chance from today as long as we start playing attacking football again.

I'm not on the 'Van Gaal out' wagon but come December, if we're still playing bad and not getting results I'll be firmly in that camp.

 

[Q80]

Better team won on the day.

 

[devilish]

Think your letting your feeling about the game rile you up.

Last two times we've played arsenal valencia has kept sanchez fairly quiet, he isn't even a first choice fullback and based of what we saw last season from him, i was happy to have him as back up, same as young.

There were no ball playing CB's about to purchase, it was obvious we wanted one. Ramos wanted a bigger paycheck,
hummles wasn't interested, otamendi is a blocker not a ball player and laporte would of needed time to settle and had a meh season.

Blind at CB isn't as disastrous as made out to be as we've seen it work and he has created goals for us, all back 4's need a midfield to protect them.

You can tear the squad a new one if you like but LVG is the reason why we lost today, no physical presence against arsenal at their ground is naive and the wrong gameplan from the word go. Had we gone there with a 3 man midfield....

That's the issue. We are happy to close an eye to players whose been shifted from their natural role because they may have been a bit crappie there because they may have done well in this or that game. This may serve us well in a couple of games but will bite us back sooner or later

The big elephant is in the room. If we are aiming for the top spots than we can have a defense which is 50-75 percent made up of midfielders and players who are too old or not good enough must leave

 

[Rozay]

Took a break from all football and media after the game as needed to pick myself up and get my head round it.

My immediate inclination is that these games happen. We got caught cold, and shouldn't perhaps go overboard. It had been an observation of mine for a while that we start slowly, my suspicion is that the philospophy dictates that we are patient and try to wear opposition down, with openings appearing in the second half. I'm not a stats boffin, but off the top of my head, my suspicion is that we have scored most of our goals in the second half.

Yesterday, we probably planned to play the game at our pace, and were blown away before we could settle. I don't think we plan to, or are used to, being in a fight like that straight from the off. It was worsened by a nahdful of poor individual performances, but largely because we were collectively caught cold. I said in the Matchday thread last week that if there is one game that Morgan Schneiderlein HAS to play in, it is Arsenal away against that midfield. For the last few weeks he has been oddly dropped, and we need him in certain games at least.

 

[RedDevil@84]

Took a break from all football and media after the game as needed to pick myself up and get my head round it.

My immediate inclination is that these games happen. We got caught cold, and shouldn't perhaps go overboard. It had been an observation of mine for a while that we start slowly, my suspicion is that the philospophy dictates that we are patient and try to wear opposition down, with openings appearing in the second half. I'm not a stats boffin, but off the top of my head, my suspicion is that we have scored most of our goals in the second half.

Yesterday, we probably planned to play the game at our pace, and were blown away before we could settle. I don't think we plan to, or are used to, being in a fight like that straight from the off. It was worsened by a nahdful of poor individual performances, but largely because we were collectively caught cold. I said in the Matchday thread last week that if there is one game that Morgan Schneiderlein HAS to play in, it is Arsenal away against that midfield. For the last few weeks he has been oddly dropped, and we need him in certain games at least.

Agree, but now that we are caught, and we know for sure that every team could come blasting at us even if it just for 20-30 mins before we set the tempo,
what would we do?

 

[TakeMeHome]

Arsenal could have totally d*cked us. Glad it was only 3-0. They came out flying and played some beautiful football. Bad move playing two 30+ midfielders in the centre.
I like LvG. I want him to do well but this slow buildup/sideways passing sh*t is so fecking frustrating

 

[MancFanFromManc]

Reading a lot of rubbish today. Arsenal just clicked, its as simple as that. In that opening 20 minutes they were on fire and blew us away. It happens. We know they have the players to do this, but rarely see it. They had 3 fast, inventive, confident attacks and scored from them all. Give them credit, chalk it up and move on

 

[SammyUnited_83]

Awful day at the office yesterday, it has been coming and we had exactly the same start against Southampton but then they only scored one and they we got lucky with an offside equaliser.

Darmian and Depay are both looking terrible at the moment, Depay more specifically looks absolutely toss, no 1st touch and can't even seem to be able to beat a man.

 

[Rozay]

Agree, but now that we are caught, and we know for sure that every team could come blasting at us even if it just for 20-30 mins before we set the tempo,
what would we do?

Every team is not Arsenal, and on another day, not even Arsenal would have been Arsenal - and the majority of teams who decide to take such an approach with us runs the risk of themselves being blown away within 30 mins.

 

[ThierryHenry]

Deja vu? SAF & United were once beaten by Arsenal in a match where old Scholesy & Carrick overran by youthful Fabregas & midfield - same tactical resolve - youthful, high energy, synchronised & well rehearsed side against an experienced but aging centre line. Winner? No need to say.

This happened twice in that season after you bought Carrick, the last time we did the double over you. But SAF definitely learned his lesson after that, Fletcher/ Hargreaves/ Anderson not giving us an inch over the next few years.

 

[Shiva87]

I still can't believe how comprehensively we were outplayed yesterday. The sad bit was that - we never looked like coming back into it.

I am inclined to believe that this a learning process, and the team will go through a few of these days to really toughen up and become title winners. I am glad this was against Arsenal (another top 4 team) and not any random opponent. Even in a good season, I don't expect United to win all their games against the top 4. We failed at the first step, but the 3 games after the international break are really important now. We need to win against Everton, get at least a draw against CSKA and City. That will be good progress.

I don't expect United to win all games, but we really need to come back strongly after a loss like that. Hopefully, it will also make LVG rethink his strategy on attacking play and get more direct players like Hererra, Wilson, Perierra into the first team. The tiredness of our team was so obvious yesterday and they barely had the legs to mount a comeback. It reflects on LVG's poor rotation since the start of this season. Darmian was our best defender (along with Shaw) in the first 4 games, and he looked totally lost yesterday. Kept getting beat again and again so easily by Sanchez as if he was not there.

 

[RedDevil@84]

Every team is not Arsenal, and on another day, not even Arsenal would have been Arsenal - and the majority of teams who decide to take such an approach with us runs the risk of themselves being blown away within 30 mins.

So basically you are saying that we do nothing coz we are perfect as it is not to have a repeat of what happened yesterday? I am thinking what do we do when we face a similar situation rather than thinking that no team could ever try that.

 

[DomesticTadpole]

So basically you are saying that we do nothing coz we are perfect as it is not to have a repeat of what happened yesterday? I am thinking what do we do when we face a similar situation rather than thinking that no team could ever try that.

Exactly, we only have Everton, City and Palace to worry about. No threat there.

 

[Rich_H_1989]

The key now is how we respond to this. LVG after the game was clearly very upset and he I'm sure is looking at what happened.

With the international break maybe it does a few players a favour. Maybe they can get a good result for their country and play well? It also means maybe LVGs team selection won't be based as much on emotion? Because pretty much all of those players would be at risk otherwise.

Yesterday was a wake up call for a lot of fans. A lot of people were getting carried away with us being top. The simple fact of the matter is, is that we were there because of others failings. We are yet to convince anyone this season and that was emphasised yesterday.

There's a lot of issues to address in this team starting with the defense still! And then in attack. Being top covered those issues a bit and perhaps it was doing us no good.

Now with 3 extremely tough games coming up LVG needs to respond. He has to make changes and be needs to prepare more for each opponent. We can't set up the same way against Everton and City because if we do it'll be two more defeats.

 

[Sarni]

The key now is how we respond to this. LVG after the game was clearly very upset and he I'm sure is looking at what happened.

With the international break maybe it does a few players a favour. Maybe they can get a good result for their country and play well? It also means maybe LVGs team selection won't be based as much on emotion? Because pretty much all of those players would be at risk otherwise.

Yesterday was a wake up call for a lot of fans. A lot of people were getting carried away with us being top. The simple fact of the matter is, is that we were there because of others failings. We are yet to convince anyone this season and that was emphasised yesterday.

There's a lot of issues to address in this team starting with the defense still! And then in attack. Being top covered those issues a bit and perhaps it was doing us no good.

Now with 3 extremely tough games coming up LVG needs to respond. He has to make changes and be needs to prepare more for each opponent. We can't set up the same way against Everton and City because if we do it'll be two more defeats.

I reckon our immediate response will be getting spanked by Everton. If there's one thing that's fairly consistent about this United side is that we don't respond well to defeats, when we lost to Chelsea after brilliant run of form last season we proceeded to get beaten by Everton and West Brom before fluking a win at Palace and after Leicester defeat we were scared shitless against West Ham and Everton and then dropped points in the following two games.

 

[Rozay]

So basically you are saying that we do nothing coz we are perfect as it is not to have a repeat of what happened yesterday? I am thinking what do we do when we face a similar situation rather than thinking that no team could ever try that.

That's not what you said, nor is it what I said. You said 'every team' can simply do the same as Arsenal - which is far from the truth as they don't all have a front 5 of Sanchez, Walcott, Ozil, Ramsay and Cazorla. Many other teams that try and come at us similarly wouldn't get such joy, and would probably concede themselves. And then they may not score their first 3 shots either.

Nobody is saying we are perfect, what I am saying is there isn't the hyperbolic risk of us being blown away in every game that you are implying, even if it did happen yesterday. I'd like to see us go after teams early too, that isn't the point. If it were that easy to do though, I'm sure other teams would have done it to us. I think many teams have probably tried to be on the front foot against us from early, but due to it not working in the same way, we aren't discussing it. More often than not, it wouldn't work. More often than not, Arsenal would have just huffed and puffed, wasted chances, then we'd come into the game later and win it.

The pattern of yesterday's game was not very different to several victories we have had against Arsenal in recent years. The only difference being what did and didn't go in for both sides. The midfield wasn't right, but credit should be given to Arsenal. It won't be as simple as other teams just 'doing what they did', because it would be extremely difficult to replicate against us. That's my only point.

I'd have liked to see us retreat yesterday though. Defend deep and grow into the game, but all plans were done by beint 2 down in like 6 minutes or whatever it was. In another game, if a top team away from home attacks us like that early, we should fall back and try to get a footing in the game.

 

[Dante]

Sanchez took a big ol' massive shit on Darmian and Blind's style of defending is to stay 6 feet away from the man with the ball at all times. That's where we lost the match in the first few minutes.

There were tactical errors in midfield, but it was individual errors in defence that killed us.

 

[David Court]

Thoughts from yesterday

1. I wouldn't partner Carrick and Schweinsteiger in midfield again. Both are ponderous and as yesterday got exposed against the speed and quick feet of Arsenal.

2. What's going on with Rooney? Very disappointing. Does he have a short term let alone a long term role in the team?

3. Utd are a team in transition. That's clear. Players like Young, Carrick, Schweinsteiger, Valencia, Fellaiani etc are not the future. I'd ship them out over the next year or so. Martial has made a promising start and Depay is raw but both are young and for the future. As for Darmian, is he really a right back?

4. The only creativity offered yesterday was Mata and he needs to start in the centre. Too slow for the flanks.

5. You still have enough quality to finish top 4 but the title this season looks a stretch. City look too good at the moment. Arsenal too inconsistent and Chelsea have imploded. I still think those 4 however will finish top 4.

Question. Is the style adopted by LVG the United way or is he being pragmatic playing in a way that suits the limitations of his players especially those mentioned in 3 above?

 

[Shiva87]

I reckon our immediate response will be getting spanked by Everton. If there's one thing that's fairly consistent about this United side is that we don't respond well to defeats, when we lost to Chelsea after brilliant run of form last season we proceeded to get beaten by Everton and West Brom before fluking a win at Palace and after Leicester defeat we were scared shitless against West Ham and Everton and then dropped points in the following two games.

Our winning streak starting with Spurs also came after a poor defeat where we did look very lost (I think it was Spurs).

 

[Ekeke]

Reading a lot of rubbish today. Arsenal just clicked, its as simple as that. In that opening 20 minutes they were on fire and blew us away. It happens. We know they have the players to do this, but rarely see it. They had 3 fast, inventive, confident attacks and scored from them all. Give them credit, chalk it up and move on

We made it easy for them by having a 2 casual CMs as our pair in midfield, both the wrong side of 30 and not pressing with the same intensity we did last season.

Meanwhile our CM who is best at breaking up play was sat on the bench. Coquelin did a good job disrupting our attacks, meanwhile we did nothing to stop Arsenal having a field day

 

[Sarni]

Our winning streak starting with Spurs also came after a poor defeat where we did look very lost (I think it was Spurs).

We lost to Swansea but we actually looked good in that game and should have won.

We don't respond well to defeats and it takes us a while to get back into any sort of form.

 

[RedDevil@84]

That's not what you said, nor is it what I said. You said 'every team' can simply do the same as Arsenal - which is far from the truth as they don't all have a front 5 of Sanchez, Walcott, Ozil, Ramsay and Cazorla. Many other teams that try and come at us similarly wouldn't get such joy, and would probably concede themselves. And then they may not score their first 3 shots either.

I am not saying every team can pull it off, but that every team would try the same. Come at us all guns firing even though they can keep it up maybe for only first 30 mins. knowing that we take our time to crank it up.

 

[Ixion]

We have become quite slow starters, we didn't get more than a couple of passes together yesterday until after we were 2-0 down and in that first 7 minutes we showed nothing like the urgency and effort that Arsenal were showing to get the ball and do something with it. It's like we just expected their opening urgency to come to nothing and we'd boringly just start passing it around and have things our way. Memphis, Mata, Rooney, Carrick were all jogging around as Arsenal sprinted around them, it was an arrogance like we didn't need to match their effort.

 

[Yorkeontop]

Arsenal ruined a potentially great game. The thing was over in 20 minutes. And they didn't even have the decency to carry on. Damn you Arsenal!

 

[Rozay]

I am not saying every team can pull it off, but that every team would try the same. Come at us all guns firing even though they can keep it up maybe for only first 30 mins. knowing that we take our time to crank it up.

I agree, I just think that we have perhaps legislated for that, and have been good enough to cope with it in every other game, hence us not being blown away frequently. I imagine that our idea is to control the game early to prevent these things, before trying to forge openings later on. This is why our first halves look boring or whatever. If we kept the ball away from Arsenal as we probably planned to, it wouldn't have happened. I don't know if we should now abandon trying to be patient from the off because of yesterday. Arsenal had nearly 70% of the ball in the opening stages, which is not our MO. Yesterday we were not good enough to impose our posession on them, at least until the game was already gone.

I'd like to think of it as a one-off though.

 

[Krovv]

 

[Ji_Maria]

I am usually fuming when we lose games against our big rivals but yesterday I managed a smile after a game. We had it coming.

We've been playing some good stuff on occasion, but on 3 different fronts. Our players are bound to be exhausted. Darmian especially, while he was so poor, I really felt for the lad. Clearly exhausted and his legs are shot. Same applies to Depay, which I think explains a lot of his recent performances. When you're tired, you get sloppy.

With that said, I've watched enough football to see teams like Barca, Real Madrid, humiliated and abused by lesser opponents. It happens. At least for us it happened against Arsenal.

 

[David Court]

I am usually fuming when we lose games against our big rivals but yesterday I managed a smile after a game. We had it coming.

We've been playing some good stuff on occasion, but on 3 different fronts. Our players are bound to be exhausted. Darmian especially, while he was so poor, I really felt for the lad. Clearly exhausted and his legs are shot. Same applies to Depay, which I think explains a lot of his recent performances. When you're tired, you get sloppy.

With that said, I've watched enough football to see teams like Barca, Real Madrid, humiliated and abused by lesser opponents. It happens. At least for us it happened against Arsenal.

I'm not sure I agree with the implication that Arsenal are lesser opponents.

It's not as if United are pulling up trees.

 

[SqueakyWeasel]

Apart from Walcott saying "we just wanted it more" (obviously didn't 5 days earlier tho did you Theo?) the best thing I've read today: Go Neville!
http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/row-zed/manchester-united-legend-gary-neville-6575132

 

[Globule]

You didnt watch it and your here telling me our 2ND half performance didt mean a thing? Seriously? The "contest was over" is a lame excuse. The score was 3 nil with in 20 mins yet they were queing up to make it double that all through that half. They didnt sit back by choice! They did so rather because we finally played like we shoukd have from the start: doing our jobs. We passed it better, pressed as a team and gave all their passers no space to hurts us or get behind us with the ease of first half. And Arsenal tried all half long. Bottom line our first 20 mintues performance and first half shambles cost us that game. 2nd half we were a different team against a team high on confidence and defending very well. We should give credit to their defending rather than dissing our second half play.

Who said I didn't watch it? Where have you got that from?

And I'm acknowledging the fact that our second half was better, but it was by no means great. And drawing too many conclusions from it is pointless considering the state of the game when we finally decided to show up.

The reason Arsenal kept attacking us in the first half and didn't decide to sit back 'by choice' is purely because of how easy we made it for them.

Arsenal's defending was good. But we didn't test them greatly. All they needed to do was keep their focus and organisation and let us pass the ball around harmlessly. A tactic that is quite common in this fixture in recent years, though usually in our favour.

 

[TheRedDevil'sAdvocate]

Question. Is the style adopted by LVG the United way or is he being pragmatic playing in a way that suits the limitations of his players especially those mentioned in 3 above?

It's a bit of both but that's why managers are being paid for, to find solutions to these type of problems. In terms of playing style, i think it's more about LvG not being able to figure out a way to deal with the particularities of the English game with this set of players. After the defeat at Leicester last season, he keeps mentioning how "difficult" the PL is. I don't believe that's a coincidence simply because Leicester are one of the PL clubs that epitomizes the "beautiful anarchy" of English football, the gang-ho style full of physicality, aggressiveness and pace.

He's yet to find a remedy for that and the worst part of it is that he seems caught between two minds. On one hand, he wants to implement his possession based tactics that aim to create spaces between the opposition lines with an active pressing game that aims to hit the opponents in their transition. On the other hand, he doesn't want to lose control of a game for 20-25 minutes and get dragged into a high tempo game that may end up with his high defensive line being torn apart.

As a result, we have a pressing game but it's not an "active" one. We don't press to steal the ball high on the pitch and create chances, we press just to stall our opponents' counter attacks in order to get enough men behind the ball and defend properly. We also play our possession football but the primary target is to keep the tempo of the game under our control and not commit players forward in dangerous areas.

Last season he tried to deal with that by constantly changing formations, this season he's settled with his version of 4-2-3-1 and he's decided to make minor tactical changes between games. We started the season by pressing considerably high but after the defeat in Holland LvG decided to play a bit deeper. We had a run of good results and it seemed like a good time time to try the high pressing once again. It was disastrous and the sad thing is that what we desperately needed to do in the opening 30 minutes yesterday is the same thing most United fans are moaning about... slow things down and destroy Arenal's rhythm.

I'm not suggesting that it's all van Gaal's fault. It's clear as daylight that we don't have enough quality up front, we rely on two 20 year olds to win us games when City have KdB, Silva, Sterling and Aguero. We also have lots of problems at defending when our pressing isn't working. But at some point LvG has to ask himself if maybe, just maybe, this is as good as it gets when this set of players and his philosophy are combined and he should try something else.

 

[Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber]

we played with zero agression first half. We also have to get rid of our notoriously slow starts

 

[jojose]

Smalling, Basti and Martial where all decent. Mata was busy but looked tired.

Darmian had a shocker, Carrick was poor.

Rooney and Memphis where pathetic.

 

[Dr Fink]

I don't think Bastian was the issue. The game was basically over in the 6th minute after horrendous errors from the back 4, especially the 02 fullbacks. Bastian was running around trying to get the ball back whereas most of the rest were just standing and watching.

That's my point - Bastian was running around chasing the ball when he shouldn't have been. They passed around him. I agree though, the two full backs made mistakes - Darmian was far too tight on Sanchez and poor Young was exposed time and time again by Memphis' poor work rate. A couple of poor games from Darmian after he started so well.

 

[Jerch]

One weird moment after the match, fellaini chauffered out of the Emirates in a clapped out Mazda?

Rental maybe since he maybe went straigth to Lodon airport to fly to where his national team is.

 

[jojose]

Judging on that Mike Smalling will be our only first choice

That's my point - Bastian was running around chasing the ball when he shouldn't have been. They passed around him. I agree though, the two full backs made mistakes - Darmian was far too tight on Sanchez and poor Young was exposed time and time again by Memphis' poor work rate. A couple of poor games from Darmian after he started so well.

He was attempting to put pressure on Cazorla who was running the game. It would appear that it is now below Wayne Rooney to work off the ball.

That type of off the ball performance (I cant be arsed discussing him on the ball) is exactly the reason why Fergie dropped him against Madrid for Welbeck who would "be more disciplined and do a job"

How he continues to be elevated to the position he seems to have is beyond me.

 

[SirBobbysCombover]

Rental maybe since he maybe went straigth to Lodon airport to fly to where his national team is.

Nice one fella,that would make sense, just looked bizzare considering everyone else left in high end motors with smokey windows.

 

[Sereques]

Arsenal at the Emirates always come at teams like that in the first 30 mins. We should have ride the storm and hit them before the end of first half which will crush their soul and then finish the job in second half. Everyone know this about arsenal. I won't point fingers to specific players. they all know it and they messed up, they are all at fault. We should have been compact for the first 30 minutes and prevent that first goal.

The gunners have very fragile confidence and we should have prey on that. Anyways, that is in the past. Moving on to Everton after the break.