PL L FA Premier League

Manchester United 0:1 Arsenal

Post-match discussion


Sun, 01 November 2020

I’m still totally baffled as to what Ole was expecting to happen with that line up today.

Diamond formation... fine, but it’s crystal clear you need the right players to execute it.

Two defensive fullbacks, plus the two left and right midfielders not being suited to the position (Pogba ‘should’ be, but the less said about him right now, the better...), meant that our two forwards were forced wider and wider.

Not to worry, the man at the head of the diamond can become the false 9 right? Except Bruno is our primary creative player, meaning every time he got the ball in attacking positions, he had nobody to play the ball to as they were all either behind him or to the side.

I mean, surely even a man with debilitating cataracts could see that the better option was either VDB, or even Cavani, in the false 9 position with Bruno taking Pogba’s role.

Also, finishing the game with Matic and McTominay on the pitch... Jesus wept.

On Pogba....this was supposed to be his role right? So why did he seem so clueless in actually playing it. Honestly, the excuses are over at this point....Since we bought him, aside from one or two goals, Pogba has consistently flopped in big games...even when not completely poor he still only manages average performances in these games.
 
On Pogba....this was supposed to be his role right? So why did he seem so clueless in actually playing it. Honestly, the excuses are over at this point....Since we bought him, aside from one or two goals, Pogba has consistently flopped in big games...even when not completely poor he still only manages average performances in these games.

He can’t be arsed
 

yeah seriously
Who the feck are you to come on the site of the biggest and most glorious club in the world and give it the big un

1 most importantly what the eff are you doing here?
2 you obviously take
It up the arse
Now feck off and focus on your team just like I do - ON MY CLUBs site
3 who on earth do you think you are to lord it. All that anger from lack of success and to know you will never be anything like Manchester United. Carefully tread and be humble. On our site lollllll
Go away
 
yeah seriously
Who the feck are you to come on the site of the biggest and most glorious club in the world and give it the big un

1 most importantly what the eff are you doing here?
2 you obviously take
It up the arse
Now feck off and focus on your team just like I do - ON MY CLUBs site
3 who on earth do you think you are to lord it. All that anger from lack of success and to know you will never be anything like Manchester United. Carefully tread and be humble. On our site lollllll
Go away

I appreciate that you went for the casual homophobia in there, made my decision to pack your bags really easy
 
yeah seriously
Who the feck are you to come on the site of the biggest and most glorious club in the world and give it the big un

1 most importantly what the eff are you doing here?
2 you obviously take
It up the arse
Now feck off and focus on your team just like I do - ON MY CLUBs site
3 who on earth do you think you are to lord it. All that anger from lack of success and to know you will never be anything like Manchester United. Carefully tread and be humble. On our site lollllll
Go away

Charming...though I know you’re hurting, so, I’ll excuse you
 
Maybe Pep has a point about wanting 5 subs a game, we need as many as we can get to hook some of these plonkers off the pitch.
 
Arsenal looked crap but they’re solid. What I always feared. Anyone who had a half decent defence and the onus is on us to win, then we won’t. Simple. We’re absolute pussies.
 
So embarassing how easily the scousers and City both controlled Arsenal when they played them and yet we make them look like world beaters
 
Definitely feeling more disheartened after this result than the Chelsea one,yet another result in europe not backed up in the league
 
I don't need to repeat what many have said already here because I share everyone's sentiments.

What worries me the most is we are 15th in the league after 7 games. Not 2 or 3 but 7.

The league never lies and the team and the manager should be under a lot more pressure regardless of the the champions league.
 
I don't need to repeat what many have said already here because I share everyone's sentiments.

What worries me the most is we are 15th in the league after 7 games. Not 2 or 3 but 7.

The league never lies and the team and the manager should be under a lot more pressure regardless of the the champions league.

Yeah both should be under immense pressure due to these utterly shambolic performances in the league
 
They're getting by because of the champions league. Ah what I'd give to go back 15 years!

Sounds harsh but ultimately we will found out in that competition as well when we face the likes of Bayern
 
Knew we would panic when it got to around 70 mins at 0-0 because this team aren't made of strong stuff like Keano said in his interview on Sky

What a disgraceful performance when we lost one of our finest players in the 60s yesterday and another been diagnosed with a degenerative illness too
 
Pathetic performance today. Never thought I'd see Arsenal dominate us and home (since their hay days). Frickin awful. Another new low for us.
 
Arsenal had 4-5 chances and deserved their goal, albeit from a penalty in the end. For an away team coming to Old Trafford, they will be very happy with this showing. As would we away to Arsenal at the Emirates, or Everton or any semi decent team really. Hit the bar from Willian, Lacazette «sitter» just before the touch from Lindelof in the box, Aubameyang’s shot outside the right post (their biggest), his sliding effort from Bellerin early on, Sako’s header totally unchallenged.. they were well worthy of a goal.
I agree totally. This was a game arse deserved to win
 
That was painful to watch. I'm not sure what Pogba hoped to do even if he didn't foul him. The inconsistent play is worrying with the amount of talent that is on this team.
 
Pathetic performance today. Never thought I'd see Arsenal dominate us and home (since their hay days). Frickin awful. Another new low for us.

Ole just looks absolutely lost when things are going wrong in a league game and that is hugely concerning indeed
 
Pathetic performance today. Never thought I'd see Arsenal dominate us and home (since their hay days). Frickin awful. Another new low for us.

Not just that but they were more aggressive and looked better defensively than us. Which is historically the opposite of our matches since Wenger went there. They are usually a soft touch with an error prone backline, but for 1 game at least they were the opposite. We'll have to see longterm if Gabriel and Partey were 2 signings to make that happen, or if they just helped for a short time
 
Ole just looks absolutely lost when things are going wrong in a league game and that is hugely concerning indeed
I don't think it's about when things go wrong. I genuinely don't see an excellent football team coming together - I terms of patterns of play, in terms of system, in terms of coaching, positional play, vision and ideology and bringing in players to suit it. It's just not there and it'll keep resulting in things not going well frequently to everyone's surprise. Fast and counter attack is our style of play - and in the modern game, I don't think it's enough.
 
Not just that but they were more aggressive and looked better defensively than us. Which is historically the opposite of our matches since Wenger went there. They are usually a soft touch with an error prone backline, but for 1 game at least they were the opposite. We'll have to see longterm if Gabriel and Partey were 2 signings to make that happen, or if they just helped for a short time
I definitely think that soft touch thing has been changed at Arsenal. And it's been evident in them winning quite a few games sitting back and countering. But you're right so odd to see them the more dogged and composed team.
 
I don't think it's about when things go wrong. I genuinely don't see an excellent football team coming together - I terms of patterns of play, in terms of system, in terms of coaching, positional play, vision and ideology and bringing in players to suit it. It's just not there and it'll keep resulting in things not going well frequently to everyone's surprise. Fast and counter attack is our style of play - and in the modern game, I don't think it's enough.

agreed. It’s never a good sign when you get the impression the manager himself isn’t really sure which combination of players to throw out for a match. If Ole had a plan going into this season then it isn’t working, and I am worried he has run out of ideas.

We might actually end up doing rather decently in Europe with Ole’s set up, but for the league I am worried an alarming number of teams have figured out how to play us.
 
I don't think it's about when things go wrong. I genuinely don't see an excellent football team coming together - I terms of patterns of play, in terms of system, in terms of coaching, positional play, vision and ideology and bringing in players to suit it. It's just not there and it'll keep resulting in things not going well frequently to everyone's surprise. Fast and counter attack is our style of play - and in the modern game, I don't think it's enough.

I totally agree with you on all points but if you dare mention no pattern of play you get told to stop talking rubbish
 
United need to deal with the Pogba issue and replace him asap. It's a pity they didn't sell him when Spanish giants were reportedly interested, but instead chose to sacrifice Mourinho. On current performance I'm not sure any club will come knocking or offer anywhere close to a price acceptable to United. But right now he is not United level. Ole has to play him regularly because he is a huge cost to the club, even when he is awful.
 
One step forward two steps back. We look invincible in the CL yet can’t string 2 passes together in the prem.

Not sure what’s going on with our home form but it’s becoming a huge problem, if we want to challenge for anything we need to be winning our home games.
Nothing gotta do form. A naive team came to attack and get exposed that too after 70 min only. Arsenal chelsea will not be so stupid.. They know our strength and weaknesses properly. Our failure lies at not adequately adjust to changing opponents and transitions during phases of play as it unfold.
 
McTominay and Pogba were outrageously bad. Dont think McTominay was in the right position for a single second of the first half and i thought fair enough he hasn't played the position before. Seemed all over the place playing in a midfield 2 as well though so ...? A performance to forget.
You cant be as anonymous as Pogba in the first half while playing midfield. You cant have that little impact, that little availability as a midfielder. 2nd half performance was possibly the worst i've seen from him. Have no idea what position he was supposed to be playing but it seemed to be wherever he felt like. Just wandered across the midfield for a half, utterly mystifying how or why he thought that was a good decision. Looked utterly disjointed for 90 mins and thought the substitutions were poorly chosen.
Thought we should have made changes in the first half even if it was just to swap a couple positions around. Think leaving the 2 above players on for 90 mins is a kind of mindblowing decision where i cant think of a single rational reason for it.
By and large i thought most others performed reasonably ok by they were just badly let down by a really, really poor midfield performance.
 
Obviously in context it’s a very bad result and pressure is rightly beginning to mount on Ole and the team.

However, if there is a positive to be had... if we ignore the first three games of the season which could feasibly be put down to lack of pre-season compared to other teams, then the Arsenal result is one of those games where you would ordinarily just take it on the chin and move on.

we were not particularly bad on the day. Without the benefit of hindsight the formation and team selection were reasonable and competitive and Rashford could have had a much better day if the referee had been tougher on theArsenal back line. Martial was missed.

Let’s move on and beat Everton.
 
I don't need to repeat what many have said already here because I share everyone's sentiments.

What worries me the most is we are 15th in the league after 7 games. Not 2 or 3 but 7.

The league never lies and the team and the manager should be under a lot more pressure regardless of the the champions league.

Agree.

You can have a bad start to the season in the league after 2-3 games but at this point we are flat out having a shocker.

Feel for Ole....individual errors costing him.

He needs to be ruthless and start dropping players
 
They don’t need an excuse. They played well. On another night it would have been 0-3.
Would it have been the same night when raptors would walk on earth again, because based on that match, Arsenal barely looked like scoring 1 in 90 before that penalty.
 
It's best to write this game off as irrelevant.

We didn't had a proper pre-season, it's fatigue.

No problems at all with the players nor the manager. Oh and Ed is always the reason why we're shit.
 
Would it have been the same night when raptors would walk on earth again, because based on that match, Arsenal barely looked like scoring 1 in 90 before that penalty.
Well thats not true. Willian hit the bar aubameyang put a good chance just wide and saka missed a free header. They had chances.
 

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Score Predictions

215,13,40
  • Man Utd win
  • Arsenal win
  • Draw

Detailed Results

  • 22% Man Utd 2:0 Arsenal
  • 22% Man Utd 2:1 Arsenal
  • 13% Man Utd 3:1 Arsenal
  • 11% Man Utd 3:0 Arsenal
  • 9% Man Utd 1:1 Arsenal
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  • 2% Man Utd 3:2 Arsenal
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  • 1% Man Utd 5:0 Arsenal
  • 1% Man Utd 4:2 Arsenal
  • 1% Man Utd 0:2 Arsenal
  • 0% Man Utd 0:5 Arsenal
  • 0% Man Utd 5:1 Arsenal
  • 0% Man Utd 0:1 Arsenal
  • 0% Man Utd 5:2 Arsenal
  • 0% Man Utd 1:3 Arsenal
  • 0% Man Utd 0:3 Arsenal
  • 0% Man Utd 0:4 Arsenal
Compiled from 268 predictions.
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Match Stats

  1. Man Utd
  2. Arsenal
Possession
53% 47%
Shots
8 7
Shots on Target
2 2
Corners
6 3
Fouls
12 12

Referee

Mike Dean