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Seven years for Man Utd to become a force again?
Judging by the reception to things since basically the 1-1 draw with wolves, which was then taken to another level after the 2-1 defeat against Crystal Palace. Manchester United fans are not in general a happy bunch, although I do support the club, I’m one of the bunch (of which I imagine there aren’t many) that are let’s say, a tad more realistic about where the club sit and in general how things are going.
Here are two teams, 1st one is the very 1st line-up Alex Ferguson picked for a league game, the 2nd one is the team that beat Blackburn 3-1 the night the 25 year wait was over and the 1st premier league trophy was presented, to say they are chalk and chees is an understatement.
08-11-1986: Chris Turner, Mike Duxbury, Arthur Albiston, Kevin Moran, Paul McGrath, Graeme Hogg, Clayton Blackmore, Remi Moses, Frank Stapleton, Peter Davenport, Peter Barnes
03-05-1993: Peter Schmeichel, Denis Irwin, Paul Parker, Steve Bruce, Gary Pallister, Paul Ince, Lee Sharpe, Ryan Giggs, Brian McClair, Mark Hughes, Eric Cantona
Not one player in that 1st line up was even at the club by the time the second one was picking up the Premier league trophy, that took 7 years, SEVEN! Seven years to build a team to win the league. Fans forget that because the thing took off from there and Utd competed for everything all the time for the next 20 years (winning quite a lot too), now some may say that its been 6 years since Fergie left, we’ve had changes to the playing staff, we should be doing better etc. while I agree its been 6 years its also been 4 permanent and 2 interim managers (Solskjaer gets in twice) which is ridiculous nonsense.
Solskjaer is at the start of his first full season and has had one transfer window. Let’s look at 2 best teams in the country Man City and Liverpool, Pep, beginning his 4th season, has had 7 transfer windows, a club and board with direction and football people in the right areas, Klopp? He’s been at Liverpool for almost 4 full seasons’ already (started in October 2015), heck, Poch is going into his 6th full season now, to think that Solskjaer can get the club back to top 4 and then onwards in 1 transfer window is madness.
Should Utd be beating Crystal Palace at home? All due respect, yes I believe they should, do I expect Utd to beat Crystal Palace? Heck no! and that were expectation gets the better of fans, Utd will be a rollercoaster of results and performances, probably for the whole season, it’ll be entertaining and frustrating, exhilarating and annoying but it wont be boring , seen as that was the bone of contention under Jose, you’d imagine people would be happy with the progress
Vernon, Dublin Ireland
VAR offside
I’ve generally ignored the VAR debate because I wanted to see a few Premier League games where it’s used before passing judgement. As a result, this might have been discussed before and I missed it, so apologies if that’s the case.
During the Liverpool vs Arsenal game, there was a moment where Aubameyang was put through. The linesman kept his flag down, I assume because if the goal had been scored, it would’ve been reviewed and the offside would get checked. Aubameyang took too long on the ball and was eventually closed down (I think by Matip) and the ball went out for an Arsenal corner. Then TV replays showed that Aubameyang had actually been slightly offside.
If the linesman thought it was offside, but kept his flag down on the assumption that it would be reviewed if a goal was scored, is it not an unfair result that Arsenal end up with a corner when Liverpool should have had a free kick 35m from their goal? What would have happened if Arsenal had scored from the corner?
Is there nothing in the VAR rules to handle this situation, or was it bad implementation of the rules from the linesman? Should he have raised his flag and then the ref allowed play to continue?
Rory, Cape Town
Man Utd’s major flaw
Against Chelsea we were promising with a great result, against Wolves, promising again with a fair result and against Palace, we just showed up our major flaw of just having no desire to win. This was a match we could easily have won but unlike OGS I don’t think we necessarily deserved to win. I had to go back to the match stats when I saw a quote of Man Utd having 22 shots – I couldn’t remember us having that many, but I guess 3 on target tells another story.
We may well have had a lot of possession but it was stale possession of the like we had under Van Gaal. But the biggest disappointment of all for me was that once we equalised, we just sat on the ball with no urgency to pass it upfield. If we’d gone for the jugular we may well have got 3 points but by doing nothing with the ball (and very slowly doing nothing) I think it sent a clear statement to Crystal Palace that we were happy with a point and they were rightly not too worried about facing a final onslaught. If we’d gone for the jugular and been hit on the break I would also be less upset. But to sit on the ball and do nothing it just showed zero ambition or desire.
For me, this gave them the confidence to make, and then make the most of their one last chance – fair play to them, a well deserved and hard fought 3 points. There can be no excuses for players we lost or didn’t sign, if the opposition want it more than you then you’ll lose a lot more points you think you could have had. We also need another plan for teams that defend against us. Our only plan is counter attacking football which doesn’t work when the other teams are also counter attacking – we just get a dose of our own medicine.
Someone needs to put a rocket up these players arses or this is going to be a very long season. I hope Solskjaer is defending his players to the media and kicking soccer boots / hurling cups of tea in private.
There are no easy games in the Premier league, there are easier games but take any opposition for a mug and you often get mugged.
Jon, Cape Town
VAR whiners
Hi,
Initially I read through David Watson’s VAR moan thinking it was reasonable enough, but then I suddenly went back to this sentence:
‘I agree that Luiz’s daft tug of the shirt was correctly ruled a penalty, relatively a lot less clear then my examples though’.
Just a jaw dropping level of either ignorance toward or misunderstanding of the laws of the game. Without getting into the whole Salah and pens thing from last season (though all are good examples of what i’m about to say) the Luiz foul on Salah on Saturday was the clearest pen of any of the various incidents at the weekend, or probably of anything given or not given in the season so far.
Here’s the thing, in association football, when a player makes honest physical contact with an opposition player it has to be for either challenging for the ball or attempting to dispossess his opponent of the ball. There are no other scenarios. Sometimes these attempts will result in a foul, even though the player’s genuine intention was to win the ball. And this is where, VAR or ney, a grey area will surely always remain.
Let’s go through a few incidents from the season thus far. I personally thought Martin Kelly was fouling Martial in the incident at Old Trafford, he clamps himself very heavily onto the Frenchman and only throws out a token leg at the end just as he shoots. He spent enough time playing man not ball for that to be adjudged a foul.
Lamella on Rodri last week. Lamella originally challenges for the ball in that he’s jumping up toward the ball as a corner comes in, but then he has a split second brain fart / panic that he’s going to allow Rodri a perhaps dangerous flick on and clearly prevents that by laying hands on him. It’s a pen.
Lascelles on Kane yesterday, Lascelles bangs a forearm across Kane’s chest as both compete to get to the ball, in doing so he knocks himself off balance and he clumsily takes Kane out by sprawling in front of him, having at no point attempted to play the ball. It makes no difference in the laws if you’ve lead conventionally with your leg, or not, with your head. Honestly don’t know what VAR thought they saw instead there, unless they go on social media immediately as well and see how many people dislike / think Kane’s a cunning ‘initiator of contact’.
Lerma on Silva, the ball is on the turf, Lerma in close proximity to Silva thinks he can play the ball, but the skill of Silva means his foot is where Lerma expected the ball to be and he treads on his foot. Looks a pen, certainly Silva’s reaction/tumble suggests so, though with the ref not giving it, there clearly wasn’t an angle of replay for that that was convincing enough to overturn it (ridiculous blurred images on Twitter alongside rants about how they just want X team to win the league instead don’t count as far as I know). But if the ref and VAR’s conclusion is that Lerma merely planted his foot next to Silva’s and not on it, then surely that’s a yellow for Silva as he appeared to have stood on a landmine otherwise.
All of the incidents above involved, to varying degrees, at some point what appeared to the officials to be an honest attempt at playing the ball. Now let’s recall the Luiz / Salah incident. Firmino rolls the ball along the turf into space in the area, Salah runs off Luiz, so what does Luiz do? Does he attempt to move backward toward where the ball is going? Does he try to engage Salah physically, ‘shoulder to shoulder’ to reach the ball first? Or does he just stand still and pull Salah back via a huge fist/clump of his shirt? It was a clear, deliberate foul, leaving not 0.01% of doubt in the officials minds as to what they’d seen.
VAR has been introduced to eradicate as many errors as it can in a multi-billion *insert your preferred strong currency here* sport where for years now those with a vested interested have been complaining about the stakes being too high for results to be decided by such obvious errors etc etc. However when those vested interests, be it managers, players, officials, media pundits and fans all seem to cling, when it’s convenient for them, to the old cliches of ‘a man’s game’, ‘when I played’ etc; and people one-eyedly (not a word) and disingenuously put still images on social media that clearly misrepresent incidents, then what chance has the technology got in the realm of public opinion?
One thing not many City fans seem to have mentioned was the Ederson tackle on Wilson. This was a great example, at the time for the officials and post-game for fans on social media, of falling back onto the typical cliche of ‘the goalkeepers challenge’. But of course in the laws of the game there is no allowance for this when judging foul play, there is no ‘25.2.1 – when adjudging the level of sanction for an illegal challenge the referee must take into account if the player was a keeper, a striker or creative No.10 type who aren’t usually that sort of player’.
Ederson pegged it 20 yards across the pitch and with momentum but lack of control took out an opponent in the attacking half, waist high with a leading leg. We’ve all seen outfield players get a red card for things similar, I was amazed there was at least no red card check. I’ve not seen any of the English punditry but at half time on RMC in France Emmanuel Petit (‘not my words Lynn but the….’) was adamant it was a sending off. Oh and that Laporte handball the other week, it was never deliberate, but it didn’t just ‘brush’ his arm did it? It clearly significantly diverted the path of the ball.
So yeah, we can whinge all we want, but whilst swathes of us demand the future of the sport is improved, but still cling to the past and ignore the laws when it suits, misrepresent incidents and slate video technology whilst using it nefariously in other mediums, then the arguing will probably never stop. But then we’ve all been arguing about football for decades, and it’s still the best game in the world.
Cheers, Bobby.
PS – from what I have seen on social media my secret desire is that following on from their feelings toward European football, and with their current grievances over VAR in the domestic league, is that in about 3 seasons time City fans will decide that the Checkatrade Trophy is the only honest competition worth competing for.
Sucking the joy out of the game
To the Liverpool fan in this morning’s mailbox accusing city of being unable to enjoy our epoch making team without getting every decision, you’ve missed the point yet again. We aren’t complaining about the rights and wrongs of a decision, we are questioning the impact VAR has on our willingness to celebrate goals. I’ve now had six or seven experiences in person, including yesterday and it’s getting worse in terms of curtailing a celebration.
However I do look forward to the candlelit vigils and threats to life and property once Liverpool have a winning goal chalked off in the 93rd minute by VAR.
It will take time, but eventually the wet blanket that is VAR will smother us all and suck as much joy from the game as it can.
Steve (David Silva – both clear and obvious btw) Manchester
Bolton’s decline
So the latest out of Bolton Wanderers is that if a new owner isn’t found by tomorrow evening they will start the process of liquidation, this is not just truly heartbreaking for the club, the players, fans etc but every member of staff we forget about who will have lost their job, from the staff who run the ticket office to the people who are in the canteen, the smaller jobs we forget and the same could be happening a Bury.
Memories of Bolton for me will be that Sam Allardyce side of 2003/04 which were League Cup runners up, a side featuring the likes of Ivan Campo, Jay Jay Okocha, Youri Djorkaeff and Jussi Jääskeläinen.
Mikey, CFC (Something has to be done to stop this happening to anymore clubs)
Six thoughts
After a thoroughly entertaining weekend, here’s a few thoughts. Not conclusions, just thoughts.
1) The various news outlets (and this includes the Guardian and Radio One) that reported Rashford was racially abused, “because he missed a penalty” should hang their collective heads in shame. Please can you stop giving some suggestion of legitimacy to this abhorrent behaviour. He was racially abused because there are still some numbskull racists out there.
2) For the first time in a long time I’m warming to Chelsea. Great to see young players getting a chance and playing well. The first two goals were fabulous.
3) On a similar subject, it’s going to be great fun at Carrow Road this season. Thanks to Pukki and Caldwell for super charging my Fantasy team.
4) As the season started the prevailing view seemed to be that Liverpool (European Champions and 97 points last season) would somehow be a bit rubbish this year. I suspect this nonsense is now dissipating.
5) How United didn’t get three penalties I don’t know. It’s time the PL introduced some video playback system to assist referees.
6) Great to see Vardy (boyhood Wednesday fan) celebrating in front of the Sheffield United Kop. As football fans we’d all do the same. It put a big smile on my face.
Looking forward to next week.
Rob (even now I can’t believe I saw Liverpool lose 3-0 in Barcelona yet still win the CL).
Not a clear scoring opportunity…
Am I the only one who feels sorry for Callum Wilson? Less than 30 yards from an open goal, albeit near the sideline, with the goal keeper sat on his arse outside the playing field and the ball at his feet, he is judged to most likely being unable to run a few yards in-field and put the ball in the empty net. That must sting for a striker with international ambitions…
Tom K
