Completely agree. Plus regarding Fergie, he also brings a lot of points just because of who he is, as his teams get the "benefit of the doubt".
Coming to the defence of PowerSpurs who seems to have been hammered twice for expressing a contrary view, I agree that it's easy in hindsight to critisise the set up from AVB at the start of the game. We were always going to suffer a width issue without Lennon and Bale has made a huge impact playing through the middle so it was understandable for him to start in such a way. What you can't do is ignore the opposition and the impact they have on a game. IMO it wasn't working for us simply because player for player City were better, despite which we were not being overun but we were being stopped from making any serious threat to them. So it appears AVB made changes at half time to the way we were set up and when that didn't work made subs that did. To critisise the manager after such a result against a team with a superior squad is churlish to say the least IMO.
Vim, are you serious??... power seems to think we 'needed' a goal when he changed it after an hour...we'd been 1-0 down since the 5th minute, would you not agree we needed a goal from the 6th minute!
? Tevez was carving us open at will, only poor finishing from Dzeko and Nasri's near miss prevented 2-0 and the game dead by HT.
Chasing a goal after 6mins against a quality team like City is suicide. They were ripping us apart without us chasing a goal and it could have ended embarassingly. Leaving it til 65mins ish and hoping we might pinch something is a valid tactic. When we hadn't he threw the dice and it worked. If we had played for 90mins like we did for the last section of the game we may well have been beaten regardless
Spurs weren't playing to contain City. You were looking to break them down, but the change of personnel was the solution. AVB had been trying to employ the right tactics from the outset, but the players were messing it up. Adebayor, Dempsey and Sigurdsson had been tripping over each other in the centre, there was no width other than from the full backs, who had no outlet ball when closed down and there was no creativity in midfield. When Bale started to play wide, Dempsey went to his best position as an inside left and Huddlestone picked out some passes, you had a purple patch, which proved decisive.
Thats partly my point. We had a purple patch and it worked, he threw the dice. If we had done something similar for 85 mins then there is no guarantee of the outcome, it may well have been that city extended their lead. We scored 3 in 7 mins, if we had done it for 70 mins would we have scored 30? Of course not. We won, well done AVB and the lads. Did we look ropey for a bit? Yes, but we were playing the current PL champions, they're hardly ****. They beat the new champs a week or 2 back too.
Lets go back to your other post. Easy to criticise with hindsight??, give over, 36000 in the stadium knew it during the game, and millions watching the box too, funnily enough every pundit said it at HT...but we're all churlish obviously! Spurm, where have i recommened we 'chase' a goal, of course thats stupid, needing one and chasing one are entirely different. Power based his comment around changes after an hour because we needed a goal then, I've merely pointed we needed one a little bit earlier than that!
Although i like to see us win by playing good attractive football, some times you can't an you have to win ugly.there was a time we could n't do that, we did against City,i'll take 3 points anytime, no matter how we play
If a few AVB police here want to ignore this game could and should have been out of sight by HT due to poor shape then carry on. The team that beat United then struggled against Wigan, not a very good argument. Luke of course we were playing to contain despite being 1-0 down, don't be churlish!
No,I think we are better because we haven't gone on the losing streak of last season. Beating Man U/City,Arsenal,Liverpool tells me that. Sunderland and saints have their new managers and Chelsea for me are the same. City worse and I can't really comment on the rest at the moment.
Hence the changes AVB made at half time, or are you suggesting the only one who did not see it was the man paid millions to manage it. When btw has the majority EVER made sensible decisions on ANYTHING!
I'll stick by what I said earlier, which (I think) means I agree with Spurf, Spurm and PowerS. Just because something worked when AVB tried it doesn't mean it would have worked from the start. We should instead be applauding him for making the right changes at the right time. As was said earlier, you can't go chasing the game from the time we went 0-1 down, which was of course down to very clever play (which IMHO we would have been more open to if we'd been chasing more). As was said, just because something worked later on doesn't mean to say it would have worked from the start.
+1. Nobody said chase a goal in so many words, but people are suggesting we should have changed it up much sooner than after the 65-70mins when AVB did. At that point we WERE chasing a goal. My point is that if AVB had done the same move much earlier we could well have been beaten. There is a lot of "it worked for 6mins against city, it must be the answer" going on. AVB got us a win vs City. Well done to him. The AVB police are out defending AVB are they? What after we beat the champs? I'm not surprised to be honest. If we can't praise our manager after beating the champs then he's in for a rough old time. City will have chances against ANY team in the PL, they beat Utd, the runaway champs.
Going back to the influence of the manager, bear in mind that Utd have won 5/7 PL championships since 2006 whilst handicapped by the financial contraints imposed by the Glazer's ownership of the club. During this time Chelsea and City have spent like Liberace. One or other signed all of Utd's transfer targets- except RvP, of course. So SAF's ability to get so much out of old stagers, young hopefuls and shrewd buys is truly remarkable.
It is a debate, and it would be nice if you could be consistant, you agree today with Powers view that we played narrow intentionally...then why did you put this at HT on the match thread? The very idea that we played the way we did intentionally for an hour, 1-0 down, against champions hoping we'd scrape through for over an hour in the same manner is about as stupid as it gets, and I'm surprised you've agreed with it. Btw, i would need to be over-excited in some way to have to calm down, the exclamation mark on the end of my post indicates I'm not. Nobody's dissing the result either, just picking the bones of the game as we do on a forum.
