[sunama]

The main problem for me is our tactical rigidity and not the level of motivation.

Absolutely 100%.
LVG would've known that WBA would park the bus and hit us on the break. Chelsea might've been a surprise, but not WBA.
So given this, he should've had a plan B - if we are 0-0 at half time, we shall switch to plan B (eg. take off 2 defenders and bring on 2 attackers or maybe playing hoofball).
Instead, we continued to do exactly what we were doing in the first half (almost as if we were surprised that WBA were using this tactic) and made the changes far too late in the game.

If I were a manager playing against us (of a top team or poor team), I'd park the bus and hit us on the break. Its a winning tactic against us, because I know that Man Utd strikers are goal shy. Even better if Falcao plays, as you dont need to mark him at all.

If we'd had the likes of Shearer or Nistlerooy playing for us today, I think we'd have scored, but our finishing isn't great. Our strikers are goal shy - we cant even score a penalty.
And as for bringing on Falcao - why? This guy is a proven non-goal scorer. LVG loves stats, but seems to be ignoring Falcao's poor stats.

 

[Mr Anderson]

We are too predictable. Teams sit back as they know we play in front of their defence, play it to the wings and try work it in. The one player who can play up front and play off the shoulder - getting in behind opposition defences is playing in midfield for us.

On top of that, our tempo is very slow again. Feels like the start if the season again, as if we were playing 3 at the back. Just very sluggish and predictable.

 

[littlepeasoup]

Dont agree at all, we look woefully one dimensional going forward.
Could see them getting a goal and holding out long before it happened.

To be fair they didn't look like doing anything in open play. Beraniho was non existent and isolated.

In the end our only tactic seemed to be hoofing the ball to the tall lad with the afro in the hopes of a knock down. With players like Mata, Herrera, di Maria et al, we should have been running rings around that side.

 

[Moriarty]

Is this last three games really all down to losing Carrick? If it is you just shudder to think where we'd be if he'd missed the last 3 months.

A big part is down to Carrick's absence mate. Who've we got that can play his role?

 

[Fully Fledged]

I hope we hold on to top 4 then replace LVG with Klopp and start again next year from a CL position.

 

[crossy1686]

When does Van Gall do his post match interview? I want to hear the pathetic excuses he rolls out this time.

 

[the hea]

At the end of the day, Pulis came and did exactly what he wanted to do. That's not good in my eyes.

Of course it's not good enough loosing at Old Trafford never is but if you read some posts on here you would think we got outplayed and was beaten by a better team when in fact we outplayed them but failed to capitalise from our chances and got hit back by a very lucky deflection.

 

[Gerald G]

It makes me laugh that there was that thread "do we need new signings?".

Today was pretty poor. We moved the ball too slowly. Not only that but the lack of pace in our team is startling. No just slow in moving the ball but the players are too slow. I think all that comes together and we struggle to break these teams down.

Another thing is that we rely on Carrick so much. When Carrick is out injured it messes up the rest of the team.
I remember a couple on here said they preferred McNair to Jones or Rojo. Laughable.

Di Maria's brief appearance was shocking. Not a single good performance today.

We really need to beat Palace and we need a few signings this summer and need to address our problem of being unable to break down compact teams.

 

[Inigo Montoya]

I hope we hold on to top 4 then replace LVG with Klopp and start again next year from a CL position.

What and it takes him a whole season to implement new players and a new style? We'll crash out of Europe and probably finish 5th before it take effect. Then Guardiola may become available...

 

[Inigo Montoya]

Of course it's not good enough loosing at Old Trafford never is but if you read some posts on here you would think we got outplayed and was beaten by a better team when in fact we outplayed them but failed to capitalise from our chances and got hit back by a very lucky deflection.

We did get outplayed. They did what Chelsea, Southampton, Swansea have done. We deserved what we got

 

[Raw]

Of course it's not good enough loosing at Old Trafford never is but if you read some posts on here you would think we got outplayed and was beaten by a better team when in fact we outplayed them but failed to capitalise from our chances and got hit back by a very lucky deflection.

Agreed. Pulis was playing for a draw, probably couldn't believe his eyes that he got away with a win.

 

[Spiersey]

I personally feel Mata, fellaini and Rooney can't all play in midfield. They all want to occupy the same space.

 

[YouOnlyLiveTwice]

It is not highly surprising this result, our possession game has lost it's meaning over the last 3 games. Most of us knew that the chance of getting sucker-punched by 1 goal was possible.
The movement lacks, the quality to dribble past defenders lack, our midfield is not the perfect balanced one you use normally in a 4-3-3, there is alot of investment needed in the squad.

 

[shabadu84]

The issue is that the players are being directed to play a very measured, deliberate style and this isn't what most of them are best at. They can pull it off - we've seen that - but that single approach is disrupted all too easily if we face teams set up to stop us or if we're facing injuries. We've seen it all the time with Arsenal in the past and rightly blamed Wenger for not addressing his tactics. Same goes for LVG right now. Great, you found something that works but not changing when you need to is dumb. Worst is that against Mourinho and Pulis, it was obvious how they'd play us and we didn't do anything to compensate. Stubbornness cost us points again today.

 

[Art Vandelay]

At least we actually had chances today which is a small step up from the last 2 matches. On another day RVP would probably have buried one or two of those chances.

On the other hand we were still a bit shit and the players that failed to create much in the last 2 matches still didn't do a whole lot.

 

[Liver_bird]

You guys are just mocking us arent you.

 

[DomesticTadpole]

Hold on though, it's not 100% the squad … it's their organisation. they are only doing what they are told to do.
We were crying out for space today so why not play our best forwards up front (where they should be)? Why not play our creative midfielders behind them (where they should be)? And why not use Jones or Blind in the defensive midfield and let them get a bit of a sniff at goal? It might have opened the game up a bit more which is what it was crying out for after all!

The Jones thing is a good point. I am sorry if he is on the bench he can play some of the game. It was obvious we were having problems. Bring Jones into the defensive midfield after half time. He is stifling the players again.

 

[glazed]

Wherefore art thou Carrick

 

[Fully Fledged]

What and it takes him a whole season to implement new players and a new style? We'll crash out of Europe and probably finish 5th before it take effect. Then Guardiola may become available...

But we are worse at the end of this season than we were around Christmas. We are not making progress under LVG we are stagnating.

 

[littlepeasoup]

The thing that West Brom did well today was crowd their penalty area. I lost count of the amount of blocks they made or our players running into each other trying to find space.

 

[holyland red]

They created absolutely nothing before they scored which was from a very lucky deflection and they created nothing after that.

I don't think you could say that about the Everton game we were piss poor in that game. Today was nothing like that because we could easy have scored 3 or 4 goals today and West Bromwich didn't create a single goalscoring chance all game so for me today was a big improvement performance wise on the Everton game.

We played at home against one of the poorest sides in the league. You sound like Rodgers here, and he actually got a point against WBA away.

 

[DomesticTadpole]

To be fair they didn't look like doing anything in open play. Beraniho was non existent and isolated.

In the end our only tactic seemed to be hoofing the ball to the tall lad with the afro in the hopes of a knock down. With players like Mata, Herrera, di Maria et al, we should have been running rings around that side.

We should, but one was on the bench, one was playing as a defensive midfielder which messed with Mata. The manager has to take some blame.

 

[the hea]

We wasted the first 60minutes doing absolutely nothing but going sideways patiently, we never looked dangerous until we went behind,
It was the exact same pattern emerging as the Southampton game at OT earlier, we've seen it all before, yea we were unlucky, but the pattern and inadequancy in our playing style is all too familiar.

This is how Van Gaal wants his teams to play keeping possession and patiently looking for an opening the biggest problem I feel is that we lack the type of players to get the most out of his tactics.

We did get outplayed. They did what Chelsea, Southampton, Swansea have done. We deserved what we got

They didn't create a single goalscoring chance all game. If that is them outplaying us you and me have very different understanding of the word outplayed.

 

[Speak]

All you can say is "thank feck Liverpool lost the other night, and have Chelsea away next"

 

[C'est Moi Cantona]

A big part is down to Carrick's absence mate. Who've we got that can play his role?

I know what your saying but is his role so critical in games like today? Yes the Chelsea game, the Everton game to a lesser extent, but surely we should have coped without him today easily, but once again I just never felt we'd score, strangely even when we had the penalty.

You can only hope he is back for these last few games, if he isn't the only we will get top 4 is if Spurs, or Liverpool don't get more than 65 points, which surely one of them will.

 

[Fully Fledged]

Of course it's not good enough loosing at Old Trafford never is but if you read some posts on here you would think we got outplayed and was beaten by a better team when in fact we outplayed them but failed to capitalise from our chances and got hit back by a very lucky deflection.

We did at the end of the day football is a chess match and LVG has been out-thought over the last 3 matches.

 

[JR10]

If you want to know what went wrong, just take a look at my estimation of the formation and player positions during the game. It's inherently clear:

1. Mata cannot be left on the wing, especially in front of Valencia, where he has not control of the game.
2. Fellaini needs to be a sub.
3. Give Di Maria a start, even if it means dropping RvP or Young.
4. We need Carrick, his twin, any clones and so on so forth.
5. Nobody was making runs in behind their defence. The only time someone did, we had two clear cut chances. And Falcao made some quality runs imo, only to be let down by the ball provided.

Main issues here are 1. And 5. Fellaini is also a big problem as he gets nullified and we have no other option in midfield so either bring on a striker or he stays on anonymously. Mata on the wing is an awful option against teams sitting back, we need to transition play quickly and increase the tempo on the wing with width and pace (of which he has none), him coming centrally into a congested area of the pitch is baffling. Midfield runner is a problem I said last week, and it's linked to the two midfielders going wide to overload wings which doesn't work, especially Herrera having to help out Mata. Poor poor poor tactics from Louis really, it's actually unreal. He needs to just play Di Maria, get some width in, overlap the full backs and allow Herrera/Fellaini to make late into the box.

Really frustrating result. We have two problems and the issue is they are so easy for our opposition to work with. We can't break through buses and you only need one chance to score against us proving you attack quickly.

Its rather amusing that we are actually top 4 on the basis of the so called harder game. If you look back to our dropped points for the most part they aren't in the big games. I think it goes back to the issues above. When teams go for us we have the space to create chances but when they don't we struggle and then reach and reach until we overcommit.

One of the guys I follow on twitter was saying this is pretty much Karma for us, after our finishing was massively out performing our expect goals based on the chances we were creating, our finishing seems to have deserted us. Their tally had us at 1.9 +pen for goals, so statically average finishing would have seen us score 3 times.

Not sure how LVG sorts it out but he needs to do something, perhaps this formation need to be refreshed.

 

[syrian_scholes]

I really thought we played good today, we created a lot of chances and on a better day we could finish better, the likes of Rooney and Van Persie need to play better, I believe if we scored the penalty we would've won the match, luck wasn't with us today, even Pulis admits they got very luck.

 

[littlepeasoup]

Was it a good save or a poor pen? Angle I was at I couldn't tell.

 

[Henrik Larsson]

My favourite part was when we really needed a goal and hadn't scored one in 2.5 matches. We simply decided to play our two top scorers in midfield, then brought on Di Maria who hasn't scored a goal in 6 months, and of course Falcao who went 6 hours without a single shot on target. Weird it didn't work.

 

[Water Melon]

Anyone got a vid of LvG's post match interview yet?

 

[togg]

You guys are just mocking us arent you.

Hey..yeah...but it's fun...

 

[Shyftyy]

Anyone got a vid of LvG's post match interview yet?

 

[LitterBug]

I was out and Sky+ the game. What an absolute waste of 90 mins of my life that was.

Why on earth do we keep playing Rooney in midfield, he's absolute rubbish there!!

And also why on earth are we playing Fellaini up front when we have 3 striker on the fecking field!!

I could see it on RvP face that he was going to miss that penalty.

Soooooooo frusssssttttttrrrrrrraaaattttttting!

 

[Water Melon]

Thanks for that, mate!

 

[JustAFan]

Light years from being a contender

 

[Americano]

1. Mourinho publishes the book on how to beat us
2. Our manage claims victory despite defeat and
3. Changes nothing
4. We lose three matches in a row, unable to score

 

[golden_blunder]

After elation of big results We're back to Van bore again

 

[JoaquinJoaquin]

So hacked off I even tried to ring MUTV for the first time ever in my life

 

[nick2004]

If RVP did not miss the penalty, we'd probably have won...