Man Utd fans want more credit as they ‘easily won the ‘xG’ battle’
Man Utd fans want more credit for beating Manchester City while we also have views on Arsenal being bottle jobs and the Villa collapse.
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Where’s Wagatha?
If United are struggling to identify the miscreant leaking the team in advance, can we not just get Coleen Rooney in to investigate?
Waggingly yours,
Chris O (MUFC)
Yet more Diallo Derby conclusions
I always wait for the 16 Conclusions, so I don’t end up parroting the same things, so here are a few more conclusions I didn’t see in that list.
(1) Let’s start with City. Amidst all the head scratching about what is wrong with City, it struck me that one aspect that’s gone out of City’s game is telepathy. Great teams depend on telepathy – it gives them that half a second extra to create a chance or a shot when you can anticipate your teammate’s cross or pass before the defender. City had it in spades. I see very little evidence of that telepathy now. Especially given a player like Doku who will always beat a man, his connection to Haaland seems (fortunately) non-existent.
(2) Bernardo Silva and Phil Foden’s comments post the game are very revealing in that context. There’s a lot of frustration within the team. When they say, ‘we as players have to own it’, or ‘we played like under 15s’ – it suggests to me that there are issues within the team. All great partnerships come to an end. Most great musical groups break up or go stale. It’s a by-product of working in high proximity in an intense environment for an extended period. These players have perhaps reached that point. The team needs a refresh not just for the reasons of age that have been pointed out already but just to create a fresh dynamic.
(3) On which point, why hasn’t it happened? One of the the things City have been gallingly good at, is recruitment. They’ve spent money and usually spent it well, often creating 2 first teams. This has dropped off in the past years. Nunes isn’t anywhere in the same league as Mahrez. Grealish has often been effective but he’s not a £100m player. Alvarez hasn’t been replaced, increasing the reliance on Haaland. Savinho isn’t that player yet. There is no back up for Rodri (Remember Fernandinho and Fernando?).
Lewis is a great kid but he’s still a kid. Kovacic is a great player to bring on to add control at 2-0 up, in the last 20 mins. He’s not going to rescue a game week on week. Add to that the injuries. The Man City bench used to be frighteningly full of game changers. Not so much now. Is this driven by caution created by the charges? Or is it Pep’s ego driving him to see how much he can win after discarding one good player after another. (Remember Cancelo?)
(4) Weirdly, this has made Pep much more human and likeable. In the past, the occasional loss for Man City used to involve a team setting up deep defences and getting lucky (and good) with counter attacks. And Pep used to turn up all sour and grumpy in the post-match interviews and answer in monosyllables. And the narrative was always about how one team wanted to play football and other other just wanted to destroy the spirit of the game. Now suddenly I find myself warming to this very human version of Pep – who is baring his soul in post-game conversations and talking about how he’s searching for answers.
(5) And one last thing about City. Kyle Walker. Remember when PFMs used to complain about foreigners diving? What an embarrassment to the game!
(6) Let’s come to United. There was a point made in the 16 Concs about still not knowing what the Rubin Amorim United team is. I don’t think that’s quite correct. Albeit inchoate, there is definitely a Amorim pattern that’s emergent. Even against a very toothless City side, the fact that United matched them for possession, were ahead on xG, barely allowed a shot on target from open play, and didn’t keep giving the ball away or aimlessly kicking it long in the general direction of Hojlund at every opportunity – these are all signs of progress from the late ETH era.
(7) United have conceded 6 goals in the past 3 games – all against currently top 6 teams. 4 of those goals have been corners, and 2 of them have been from individual errors. Zero goals from open play where the opposition simply played through our defence. The glass half full version of this is that there’s a significant improvement in the structure of open play. Yes, the corners problem needs to be addressed (obvs!) but you can see the defensive work and patterns starting to grind together.
(8) And of course the point done to death now, but fundamentally important – Amorim’s ideas about how the players attitudes both on and off the pitch are now becoming abundantly clear. It was a big call to drop the 2 leading scorers for your first Derby, so kudos to Amorim, and also for making it clear that he’s calling the shots. Ball in Rashford’s court. Amad used the phrase in his post-match comments ‘we had to be angrier than them’ he may have a language problem, but I think the meaning is clear. More heart is required. United have been a team that’s gotten used to conceding late. It would be nice to see that pattern inverted.
Ved Sen (MUFC – The glass is half full)
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…- Lots of pundits describing the derby as terrible football, but how many teams go to the Etihad and (almost) match City for possession? This was a deliberately controlled showing from Amorim’s crew, which btw easily won the ‘xG’ battle. The real question was why Pep’s team showed no ambition whatsoever.
– Kyle Walker’s ambition was to get Hojlund sent off by faking a head injury. The punishment for that is a red card. Someone make it make sense that his punishment – for deliberately, consciously cheating – is a yellow card? Think the rules need reviewing there.
– Is De Bruyne really done? I’m not sure. He’s not been able to get a consistent run of games and has, arguably, the best brain in modern football. I don’t think you count him out yet. Would personally love to see him deeper, make the ‘Scholes’ move as his (underrated) physicality diminishes.
– Haaland is an absolute monster and incredible in his own way…but does anyone think he’d score half as many goals in any other team? When City aren’t serving him, he’s barely there. Fine, they’ve had the best team in world football for 5 years so they can carry him, but most can’t. And don’t give me Bundesliga scoring stats, the list of amazing goal returns there that don’t translate in the prem is endless.
– Fernandes is weird. On the pitch he’s whiny, immature, temperamental and erratic. Off the pitch he’s articulate, thoughtful, well-spoken and by all accounts a great guy. I don’t know if United can reliably build around such a mercurial player, but also have to like him.
– If you take out the Forest result, Amorim’s doing a good job so far. But you can’t. Amazing how narrative shifts on such small things.
– I hate to end on this, but as a United fan, the PGMOL is a joke. In real time, the Dias foul on Hojlund doesn’t look bad. In fact, I thought Dias poked the ball away. Fine, easy for the ref to miss. And this year, VAR is only going to correct clear mistakes, high-bar. I can accept that too. It categorically is a penalty, and there is no bone in my body that believes if it was the other way, it wouldn’t be reviewed. Because that’s what this year has been for United. Compare that not being reviewed to the West Ham ‘penalty’. It’s not inconsistent, it’s a farce. Scrap it.
Ryan, Bermuda
Fergie bad at rebuilding? Really?
Ibrahim Khalid, pretty sure it was bait, but did you REALLY put Fergie in a list of managers who ‘struggled’ to rebuild?
A man whose main attribute was his skill in making multiple successful teams?
A man who built at least 3 separate highly successful teams in his tenure at United?
92-95
GK Peter Schmeichel, LB Denis Irwin, RB Paul Parker, CB Steve Bruce CB Gary Pallister, CM Roy Keane, CM Paul Ince, LW Ryan Giggs, RW Andrei Kanchelskis, F Mark Hughes, F Eric Cantona.
98-2001
GK Peter Schmeichel, LB Denis Irwin, RB Gary Neville, CB Jaap Stam, CB Ronny Johnsen, CM Roy Keane, CM Paul Scholes, LW Ryan Giggs, RW David Beckham, F Dwight Yorke, F Andy Cole
06-09
GK Edwin van der Sar, LB Patrice Evra, RB Wes Brown, CB Nemanja Vidic, CB Rio Ferdinand, CM Michael Carrick, CM Paul Scholes, CM Anderson, RF Park Ji-sung, LF Wayne Rooney, F Cristiano Ronaldo
Some could argue 4 and I wouldn’t begrudge it, but these 3 teams won major honours in each incarnation and while some players crossed over eras only Giggs was around the whole time, and even he was on the fringe by the final campaigns.
This is not saying it is easy or that Pep deserves lambasting for not doing it but even his biggest detractors can acknowledge one of Fergie’s best skills was knowing when to rebuild and how to do it well. In other words, and I am sure others will say the same, don’t be a silly goose.
From a rose tinted perspective overall though I think Fergie was better than Pep and I cite Aberdeen, Not United, for this statement.
Last team to beat the Old Firm to the title
Last team to beat Real Madrid in a European final
Won a European title WITH ABERDEEN!
Pep has never done it with an outsider team.
M. Wadd (Stirring the hornet’s nest with my final paragraph)
Bottle chat
Okay, Arsenal haven’t been able to capitalise on Liverpool’s blip but the Chavs have…well done Chavski. However Liverpool are no further ahead of Arsenal than they were a couple of games ago and less ahead of the Chavs. Who are bottling this? There’s more than two teams in this if you haven’t noticed! Long way to go so let’s see.
The Fulham away game was an improvement from last season where they controlled the game and we quite rightly lost. This time we managed to get a draw and stay in touch. They had to defend and they did it well. Disappointed with the Everton game. They didn’t come to win but it’s up to them and up to us break them done. Having said said that they defended very well and Pickford was excellent.
Just a thought, that certain Arsenal fans have laughed at on Facebook and some have agreed with. Arsenal played the previous weekend and midweek and Everton’s game v Liverpool last weekend was postponed. Excuses? We had a light squad I will agree that I haven’t a clue what the substitutions were about (apart from burnt Odegaard’s!).
Chris, Croydon
(Somebody compared a team to Radiohead (one of my favour bands) the other day) I compare Arsenal to Eels!
On Villa and their hangover
Appreciate Villa chat in the mailbox this week is probably going to be the equivalent of the potato salad at a barbecue, but a few thoughts in case you’re interested:
I don’t have an issue with drawing lines to get an offside decision right (particularly if it’s one of the few things that will stop Villa conceding goals), but if it’s going to take the thick end of 10 minutes to do it, we shouldn’t bother.
The reason we don’t use VAR for everything – pushing at corners, inconsequential offsides, throw-ins, Elliot Anderson fouling people, etc – is because we understand there’s a trade-off: between the cost to the sport of getting decisions wrong vs the cost of a 90 minute game taking 7 hours to end. Obviously getting this right is impossible, but we are still getting it more wrong than we should at the moment.
Something else that needs nipping in the bud is the Champions League hangover narrative. On the face of it, this looks fairly open and shut: the 6 games Villa have played after a CL midweek, we’ve picked up points at the same rate as Southampton; in our other 10 games, we’ve picked up points at the same rate as Liverpool. So playing in Europe is the difference between Villa being the worst team in the prem and the best, yes? Same as Newcastle last year right?
No. First Newcastle: the 6 games they played after European games last year earned them 1.83 points per game, with an aggregate score of 16-6. Over a season, this form would have got them into 4th spot. Clearly there was more going on there, and basically it was injuries.
So what about Villa? Those 6 ‘hangover games’ were defeats to Liverpool, Chelsea, Spurs and Forest, all away from home; a draw with Bournemouth where we conceded an equaliser in the last second; and then the 2-bus-drivers-arguing-over-a-parking-space 0-0 vs ETH Man Utd. The only top quality side we’ve played in the non-hangover games was Arsenal at home, which we also lost. Basically playing against good opposition is the big factor here, not what we’ve been doing in the build up.
(There does seem some substance to that theory; the ‘record v top half’ table is not good for Villa – Ed)
That said, in that Arsenal game we were quite good, whereas in all 6 hangover games we’ve been rubbish; surrendering 1-0 leads in half of them, getting nowhere near the goal in the other 3 and getting absolutely walloped most of the time. A full week to prepare for a home game against another up and down side in the Dodgy Cash Derby should clarify all this.
Neil Raines
Absolute VARce
Props to Funstar Andy for bringing the PGMOL handbook to my attention in his letter, I had no idea it existed and makes for some interesting reading (the “6 second rule” for goalies is currently being trialled as an “8 second rule” in Premier League B, with the punishment being a corner to the opposite team and a possible yellow card for the goalie). For those that can’t be arsed to read it, here’s the key bit about considerations on holding:
“Where one player clearly holds an opponent and this action clearly impacts the opponent’s movement and/or the ability to play or challenge for the ball (material impact), this action should be penalised”
I’ve just forced myself to watch the highlights again and there is a CLEAR and OBVIOUS pull from Anderson on Rogers’ wrist, pulling him back as he’s trying to catch up to the ball. I don’t think Rogers did himself any favours kicking the back of his own standing leg before hitting the deck but regardless, how is this not “clearly impacting the opponent’s movement”? Try running off as I pull you back and see how you get on – the mind boggles at this decision.
However, the real culprit of the piece here is the absolute steamroller that Anderson (him again?!? He must have some compromising pictures of that ref) laid on Cash just before putting the ball across for Elanga to put away. 99 times out of 100, that’s given as a foul and rightly so but for VAR to check it and clear it??? All this tells me is that John Brookes feels the same way about Villa as David Coote does (did?) for Liverpool.
I keep saying that VAR isn’t the problem, it’s the people that run it. Given that we’ve now heard the soundbites of VAR operators not giving decisions so as “not to get their ref mate in trouble”, there needs to be a move away from active referees looking out for their brethren. Hand it over to a completely separate body who can make these calls with absolutely no attachment to the ones making the original call – at the end of the day, they still have a monitor to go and look at.
Rant aside, Forest probably did deserve the win based on effort alone but Martinez’s save was worthy enough to win the match too. I can take losing to the better side, but Jesus it stings when one of your players has been the victim of GBH to cause the loss. Still, I look forward to Howard Webb’s explanation on Mic’d Up as to how it wasn’t a foul, how global warming is a myth and how I owe him £20 despite never having met him before.
Jeff G, West Brom Villan (Martinez has got Save of the Season all sewn up though, surely???)