Rival watch

Finishing 5th in the PL, 6 points behind 4th, and CL QF,
with the weak squad Spurs had, was not "throwing in the towel" .

 

There isn't really an argument here.
Utd are not at a level to win the CL. No EL winners are likely to be.
Utd's league position is not particularly relevant as any top six PL club will be better than 50% of the teams who qualify anyway.
Utd' s win tonight does improve the team's chances though by whatever margin. What that margin will be depends on how the team improves next season - and transfer business will obviously be important. Utd are a special case though. Top class players can be recruited. If the manager gets the right players, the team can be improved significantly, it's unlikely that any other EL winner will ever be in this position.

 

Well this, I believe, has been a major part of the problem. Our approach to the EL under AVB and Poch has been neither here no there. Under Harry, it was clearly viewed as a competition that guaranteed a minimum of 6 competitive matches to give the youngsters and reserves a run-out; hence our failure to get out of our group in 2011-12.

Under Poch, team selections have been peculiar. Sometimes too weak for the opposition, sometimes seemingly too strong. It is clear that he believes that we aren't strong enough in depth to really 'go for it' in earnest. Even United, with all their resources and spending power, were unable to juggle both this season.

This doesn't change the fact that I am 100% certain that even if we'd played a full-strength side for the EL last season it still would've done nada for our CL fortunes this season.

The two competitions are a world apart. When you consider the fact that over 50% of the CL teams are simply cannon fodder *cough* Arsenal *cough*, it beggars belief that anyone can think playing the likes of CSKA, Ludogrets, Dundalk and FC Qarabag can possibly prepare them for the likes of Juventus and Bayern.

 

Lead to or prepare you for?
Two vastly different things.

 

Either way, we failed to push on in the league and as a result, our squad was left similarly weak the following season; a fact which ultimately proved to be Harry's undoing.

The fact that our top scorer that year was VDV with 13 goals shows how far away that team was (in the league) from our current one. And yet our current one flopped in the CL badly. Does that make them worse? Absolutely not, because the league table - year on year - is a far better indicator of a team's true strength than the CL.

 

We can:

Piss off

 

I agree with most of this. The main problem being that a lot of United's big purchases haven't come off. Pogba was pretty wretched last season. Outside of the EL, M'Khitaryan has been poor. Di Maria failed completely. Shaw is probably leaving.

Having lots of money just means you can waste more. It doesn't guarantee that you will do better than us or Liverpool. There's still not that much of that team that I'd take over ours at present. Maybe you can accept it after you buy them off us?

 

What he meant was: celebrating winning the charity shield is like celebrating getting a seat on a crowded train only to realise that you're on the wrong platform but you stay put anyway because you 'got' that seat, and then when you arrive in completely the wrong city 3 hours later you go around boasting to everyone about how you 'got' a seat on the train

 

So is a team with lots of money wasting £58m on a player that can actually play but decided he didn't like the English climate worse than other teams with much less money wasting £30m on players who just cant play?

2 trophies and CL group stage, have Liverpool and Spurs really done better?

 

We could go round in circles for hours stuck in this argument. Bottom line is, next season will tell. More for United than for ourselves - as we'll be nomads for a while. You'll no doubt spend another fortune in the summer. If you then go on and mount a serious title challenge or even win the thing, then yes - the successes of this season can be celebrated as crucial building blocks towards restoring United to the standards set under SAF. But if your title challenge goes out with a whimper again, these wonderful trophies will be shown up as a very expensive flash in an even more expensive pan.

 

No argument from me with that

 

Makes a change

 

It's not about individual players necessarily.
The team was disjointed because there was no continuity of selection. That was down to three factors - too many fixtures, injuries and Mourinho not knowing his best team. Whoever was picked, in whatever formation, the team was crying out for players who could score goals besides Ibrahimovic.
The right signings could ignite the team. It might be one player who makes a crucial difference.
Or it might be other factors such as continuity of selection, better understanding between the players, better tactics, different style of play, fitness levels etc.

 

Precisely. If the angry little Portuguese bloke keeps on with the negative stuff as his central tennet of how United play, I think you'll continue to come up short at the very top level and his stay will be a short one. As Chelsea showed this season, it's about winning games. Not losing isn't going to cut it. There are too many teams at the top of the tree to just win against the 'also-rans' and not lose against the competitive teams as he used to do.

As much as United may improve next season and as much as you spend, so will Citeh and Chelsea and Liverpool and they're currently ahead of you. We'll be in there somewhere too.

United's win tonight does them no harm but it doesn't solve a lot of problems either. It adds a small additional amount of money to a pre-existing ****ing great pile of money. If you can pay what you did for Pogba and the others with no CL , it's not that big a deal. For Spurs and Liverpool it means a whole lot more.

 

You mean like the teams he has won leagues and CL with?
What do you call the very top level?

 

I don't see where I was knocking as what I posted would apply to any team which gained access to the CL via the EL Diego and not just Man Utd, it just so happens that this time it was they. You might also notice I posted that I was not deliberately provoking Luke. I'm actually HAPPY an English team won in Europe again and I don't begrudge any team their success.

 

Nobody in their posts has suggested otherwise have they?

 

Brian said it was meaningless to win the trophies which kind of insinuates its not a successful season.

 

They've spent £300+ mill to do it. And they'll probably spend the same again this summer.

Depends on you point of view, I suppose. If you measure by just trophies they've done well. But their consistency over an entire season is poor considering the amount invested.

Mourinho virtually bet the farm on winning the Europa. Had that blown up, he'd be sitting nowhere, despite all the money spent.

 

Firstly I congratulate Man Utd on winning the Europa league (and the league cup), we all love to see our teams win trophies and we should not knock their achievements we would be delighted if we had both in our cabinet today.

But I will go back to a point I have made before that when we were a cup team we were always told that the ‘really good teams’ challenge in the league and we have spent the last 2 seasons genuinely doing that for probably for the first time in my lifetime but we have come up short in terms of squad depth when trying to compete in Europe too.

This season it should be remembered that we played most of our group matches without Alderweireld and Kane, we got Monaco from pot 4,(any other team from that pot and we would have got out of the group, though realise that is the luck of draw) but they reached the semi finals! and no one saw that coming. We also had probably the worst performance under Poch v Leverkusen who were equally appalling that night but scored the games only goal which in keeping with the match was scrappy at best.

We still have a much smaller budget than 4 teams that finished below us in the league and we need to address issues of squad depth before the new season if we are to compete on more fronts in the future. But we are still young we have improved again this season and I still believe that we have a very bright future