Disagree re De Gea...our finishing was not top 4 standard ... end of. Agree about the team with the exception of Eriksen who (imo) was poor throughout and did not put in the workload. Trippier was terrible in the first half but continued to work hard. Eriksen did not...he left runners, gave the ball away and was too easily out muscled for my liking. On another day, if our finishing was better we might of got 4 or 5 but in all honesty if those shots, placed as they were had beaten De Gea it would have been shocking keeping performance. We were not composed enough in front of goal which is very unusual for Dele, Kane, Eriksen and Son.
Sometimes football is bloody frustrating - I hate days like today Spurs created more than enough chances today, but we just weren't ruthless enough, to many saves that a keeper of De Geas quality was going find relatively easy, add to that I also watch my son lose a cup semi final on penalties in a match where their opponents didn't register a shot on target, whereas we like Spurs had more than enough chances but couldn't beat a keeper who made lots of saves without being forced to make many really difficult ones - Fortunately no work tomorrow so the Scotch may take a hit tonight
I thought Eriksen done okay second half. He was involved in just about every piece of attacking play by us. First half admittedly he was a passenger though. Thought Dele and Kane were poor. Son was also ineffective. Winks had a better than usual game but his finishing is as good as Sissoko’s. Trippier pathetic. I went on a solo crusade backing him up last season but he’s been generally way below par this season and has made costly mistakes.
All those goals and then a penalty and now nil. Poch said we needed to be more consistent and how right he was. To me this stems from the Cardiff match when we didn't press ahead and score more, this told me our attack was lacking. I heard "We'd done enough" or "We eased off because we had the match won" or "We didn't want to tire ourselves out." All rubbish attitudes. Had we kept scoring against Cardiff we'd have won today easily. When you're way ahead after 25 minutes you keep scoring, you don't ease off and now we're doing a Liverpool who faded after the second half of the Arsenal match. Yesterday they only won by a penalty. So now a blip until we win again in the league and the winning run will continue. I just hope we do what we should and keep pressing for more goals like City did against Burton. They didn't say "Oh we didn't want to tire ourselves out" or rubbish like that.
Wasn't just me then who thought our shooting wasn't testing enough...all straight to De Gea or in comfortable reach for him..our shooting wasn't clinical.
When goalkeepers do their job, it's lucky. When strikers do their job, it's brilliance. We're all above these media clichés aren't we? All de Gea's saves were regulation ones. If he'd conceded from any of those shots, he'd have been criticised.
Unfortunately, it's not the first game where he's given the ball away while totally out of position. It's happening far too often but most most teams aren't good enough to capitalise.
To be honest, I thought you were a little unlucky to lose that. Trippier's amateurish error aside, some of the shots were straight at De Gea, which he saved comfortably, but he also displayed cat-like reflexes to keep some of those shots out too. Was a mixture of profligate finishing and top drawer goalkeeping. At the end of the day, he's considered the best goalkeeper in the Prem for a reason. At times, that game was reminiscent of when we played United at The Emirates last season. We had 75% possession, 33 shots, 16 on target...yet we lost 3-1. De Gea was in inspired form that day, too. He only got breached once and even then, he almost saved that! You've played more football than United have as well with minimal rotation. And even despite the gruelling, tiring midweek game against Chelsea, you still dominated a fresher, rejuvenated United team in the second half. Sissoko's injury was obviously a massive blow considering how well he's done for you over the last few weeks. Sometimes these type of games happen. Frustrating as ****, but it's not like you were completely played off the park. The only thing that would be concerning (in addition to Sissoko's injury) is Son going off to the 2019 Asia Cup for a few weeks and Kane's injury at the end didn't look great. Assuming Son stays at the Asia Cup for the entirety of the tournament and Sissoko's/Kane's injuries are serious, that may be a huge problem. Can't say it wasn't coming though, as they've both played a lot of minutes this season. If your worst fears are realised, surely Levy would have to consider reinforcements? As Llorente doesn't seem like he will cut it in the absence of Son/Kane.
I am sorry but that is total garbage - we got 7 in the match after Cardiff, then we beat Chelsea, and today we gave the most inform team in the country a very good game, the 2nd half v Cardiff had nothing at all to do with todays defeat.
from where I was you could see him not track runners, and his passing, even in the second half was poor. Trippier is an easy target cos his mistake gave them the goal but in second half he pushed forwarded and helped create chances like Eriksen...the difference being Eriksen did not work as part of the team imo...the same was true on Tuesday v Chelsea.
We dominated the match, made two or three bad mistakes, one of which cost us the goal and were terrible in front of goal. Man Utd showed very little except when we were in all out attack mode but did punish one mistake. How anyone can deduce that something is badly wrong after a match like that is beyond me.
Trippier was exposed a number of times at RB though. It wasn’t just his mistake that was the only issue. He’s not been himself this season, I’m one of his biggest fans but I can’t defend his season so far. RE Eriksen, as I said, second half I thought he was instrumental in everything going forward. Essentially he shouldn’t be required to do a shed load of tracking back (although to moderate degrees of course he should) but the fact Sissoko went off and we had no Dier, it probably makes his lack of tracking look worse than what it probably is. He was the best of the front four today in my opinion.