PL W FA Premier League

Southampton 0:1 Manchester United

Post-match discussion


Sat, 23 September 2017

Some people are just so stupid. Not you, the poster you replied to.

It's kneejerk madness.
If we smash palace it'll go too far the other way.

Having seen a lot of reaction to a draw at stoke and a narrow win at Southampton, the first defeat will be awful reading
 
Had time to reflect over the game and while I can see the frustration of the mighty Man Utd resorting to keeping Southampton at arms length, I thought it was a good performance for what it was. I believe there are a lot of positives to take, so here it goes:

Firstly, we won the game. I went into this game not expecting a big scoreline, maybe a 0-2 win because they do seem to struggle for goals at the moment and I suppose even if we were less defensive, odds are we'd have still kept a clean sheet. However, they don't exactly ship goals either. City were always going to at least match us in terms of goals scored when they eventually wore down West Brom - the 5-0 is just a couple more logs on the fire for our fans (and the media will wank over City this week, but I'm fine with that and it's probably warranted). For me, it was all about remaining level on points because City have to go to Chelsea at the weekend while we face a Palace side who are lacking in confidence. The main problem with our performance was us being poor in front of goal when the chances came - again, something that is going to happen every so often. I think we had 3-4 good chances against Saints, but made the wrong decision too often resulting in us not killing the game (like we have in every other game so far). Lastly, my main positives from this are that I think if this was City, when their plan A didn't work well enough to kill a game, they wouldn't be able to close a match like this out. Probably not a huge criticism as they should kill the game most of the time, but I'd stand by expecting them to drop points if they were asked to defend for 10-20 minute stints late on. Us, on the other hand, kept Southampton out completely. We forgave possession but they never had what I'd call a clear-cut chance in the 90. That is excellent from us, whether our fans who want to see more offensive displays like it or not, it's an outstanding quality and the game management was superb. It'll stand us in good stead for tougher away games.
 
Our performance wasn't great, it wasn't even good but we got 3 points and that's all matters.

Lot of overreation as usual and people think we never struggled in away games under SAF. For what it's worth in 2012-13 season we had 43% possession and just 11 shots at Old trafford vs 57% possession and 20 shots for Southampton. This was the Southampton team that was just promoted to Premier League.
 
Our performance wasn't great, it wasn't even good but we got 3 points and that's all matters.

Lot of overreation as usual and people think we never struggled in away games under SAF. For what it's worth in 2012-13 season we had 43% possession and just 11 shots at Old trafford vs 57% possession and 20 shots for Southampton. This was the Southampton team that was just promoted to Premier League.

We've always struggled against Southampton since the came back up, both home and away.
 
We've always struggled against Southampton since the came back up, both home and away.

Yeah, not sure why. We lost at Old trafford twice under Van Gaal. Since SAF's last season we never did a double on them and always struggled against them. I think last season at Old trafford was the last comfortable match we had against them since they came up.
 
It was a big win for us especially when we did not play well. I still think that we need a taller CB, as Long was out-jumping both of our CB's.
 
As a lot have said performance was poor. First half was +/- even and in the second half they came out all fired up. I keep reading we were over run in the middle of the park but the big difference was two things, firstly we gave them ample of space to play in, never pressured them when we didn't have possession, we let them play. It was like going back to LvG times, instead of defending higher up the pitch the players were running back with the Southampton players and only outside the box turned around to defend. Even then there was little pressure more trying to cut out the passing lines. Secondly when they lost possession they were instantly pressuring our players, with one or two players at a time.
I can understand that there are fans unhappy with our game but 3 points are 3 points, doesn't matter if you win by 4 or 1 you only get 3 points. After a tough game like that and seeing City win 5-0 (which also took them 45 min to get off the mark) and Chelsea spanking Stoke 4-0 while we had to settle for a draw could cause some frustration but we are still only in September, long way to go.
 
Pathetic second half performance. Parking the bus against a pretty poor Southampton side for 45 mins. We ended up with 6 defenders in the end! Glad we won, but that was a very unconvincing performance.

I was adamant that City and United had an equal chance of winning the title. Now I'll admit that City are the favorites, with us and Chelsea behind.

I won't be so sure of that ! City is killing it atm, no doubt of that. They will score a lot of goals this season but one thing's for sure - their defence is bound to let them down. Stones & Otamendi are far from convincing. They are there for the taking.
 
I won't be so sure of that ! City is killing it atm, no doubt of that. They will score a lot of goals this season but one thing's for sure - their defence is bound to let them down. Stones & Otamendi are far from convincing. They are there for the taking.
They have too good an attack though. They'll simply outscore the opposition in most cases. They might trail off like last season, but I doubt it. United and Chelsea have a good defence, and a good enough attack. I'm still waiting for us to go against a top 6 team. Should give us a better idea where we stand.
 
Not much to get excited about but it d=showed we have improved. absolutely no doubt that in the past three season, we'd have drawn or even lost. Jones was immense again (judging buy the Sky highlighs only) and Bailly was good too
 
A bit of a scrappy win but matches like this were common under SAF when we were challenging for the title so I'm happy about that.
 

Player Ratings

6.3 Total Average Rating

Highest Rated Player

Lowest Rated Player

Compiled from 536 ratings.

Score Predictions

536,20,53
  • Man Utd win
  • Southampton win
  • Draw

Detailed Results

  • 27% Southampton 0:2 Man Utd
  • 22% Southampton 1:2 Man Utd
  • 13% Southampton 1:3 Man Utd
  • 10% Southampton 0:3 Man Utd
  • 7% Southampton 1:1 Man Utd
  • 6% Southampton 0:1 Man Utd
  • 6% Southampton 0:4 Man Utd
  • 1% Southampton 0:5 Man Utd
  • 1% Southampton 0:0 Man Utd
  • 1% Southampton 1:0 Man Utd
  • 1% Southampton 2:1 Man Utd
  • 1% Southampton 1:4 Man Utd
  • 0% Southampton 2:0 Man Utd
  • 0% Southampton 2:3 Man Utd
  • 0% Southampton 3:0 Man Utd
  • 0% Southampton 2:2 Man Utd
  • 0% Southampton 2:4 Man Utd
  • 0% Southampton 1:5 Man Utd
  • 0% Southampton 3:1 Man Utd
  • 0% Southampton 5:0 Man Utd
  • 0% Southampton 5:4 Man Utd
Compiled from 609 predictions.
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Match Stats

  1. Southampton
  2. Man Utd
Possession
61% 39%
Shots
14 9
Shots on Target
4 4
Corners
8 4
Fouls
12 9

Referee

Craig Pawson