Rooney you muppet, must have his head band too tight. Funny how he didn't seem to find that thing to protect his head until after the internationals. Edit: Rolfes
I don't understand where all this rubbish about De Gea being the best in the league comes from, he simply is not.
3rd best team in the Bundesliga looked about mid Championship standard to me. We know there are two strong teams from that league, but this is a good indicator of how poor the rest are. Better than the PL? Tell us another one, DL
If they were mid-Championship standard then I take it you felt United looked like mid-table Premier League standard then? Take away the offside opening goal you scored and it looks more like 2 evenly matched sides where home advantage proved to be the difference. There was only one thing in that game that I'd describe as mid Championship standard and that was Rio's defending
Utd weren't brilliant, but there was a clear gulf in class and when the pace was stepped up (literally) in the second half, they could have shipped another four goals quite easily. What Utd lack is a dominant defensive midfielder who would have prevented Leverkusen carrying the ball forward through midfield as they did. This is what made them look reasonably comfortable on the ball at times. But they still only had 35% possession.
You're right, you could see the gulf in class but it wasn't as huge as you seem to think. Really you could and should have had another 2 goals but then you should have had 1 chalked off too. I don't think it's any great surprise though that the 3rd best team in Germany was well beaten away to the Premier League champions, especially considering they lost 2 of their starting 11 in the summer and had a further loss in Bender being unable to start. Belittling Leverkusen based on one game and even quoting possession as some kind of proof is doing the exact samething DL is criticised on here for. I remember when Bilbao walked all over United in the Europa League. Did the fact that a mid table La Liga side beat United twice mean that our league was crap or that United would be relegation fodder in La Liga? Not to me but to you and DL apparently it does.
Coutinho's out til the end of next month. Thought he didn't look right when he went off against Swansea.
As you will know YV, my point was aimed at DL,who claims the Bundesliga is superior to the PL now in terms of quality. Bayer Leverkusen are a limited team, however you dress it up. That's not being dismissive or disrespectful. It was patently obvious that they were weak at the back and lacked guile, skill and pace at the other end. Any of the top 7 or 8 sides in the PL would beat them nine times out of ten. They didn't have an off day, they just don't have the players to compete and I think that would be true of any team outside the top two in Germany. But our top half dozen all have world class players capable of performing at a much higher level than Bayer Leverkusen are at.
I may aswell bring in Ozil and he will get crocked. Would actually prefer us to beat teams with their best players so I can pick rival players without feeling gulity, but **** it, whoever I pick gets injured so no spurs players!
Would I be right in assuming "4 lyf" is intended to mean "for life"? Not quite so committed in practice then...