What has happened to him? Thought Antonio Valencia was one of the best wingers in the league a few seasons back and nowadays he looks bang average.
United are far less than the sum of their parts at the moment. They've got a lot of very good players, but they're not a very good team. They've still got enough talent to win most of their games, but their performances aren't of a high enough standard. The system doesn't get the best out of them and their balance looks totally off. If you were to go through their squad and pick out the best XI individual players, how many of them would be defenders? Who's their best centre-half and how many of the other top sides would he get into? They've got quite a tough run coming up now and it would be bloody typical if their bans forced the managers hand and it worked out for them. Van Gaal's struggling at the moment and Moyes would be getting absolutely slaughtered if he was still in the role and they were playing like this.
Moyes deserves some flack from taking the league champions to 7th in the space of a season, but I still think a lot was Fergie's fault for leaving the squad in such a rubbish state when he left and never attempting to fix the problems United had in the latter parts of his tenure. Another issue Moyes had was that he couldn't bring in the players he wanted. Whether that was down to Moyes not being a well-established name for such global appeal for the higher calibre players or whether Woodward was just a crap negotiator, I don't know, but United finishing 7th was certainly a reality check and they splashed the cash. Spending £150m without any European distractions and scraping 4th place with a bunch of very disjointed displays doesn't exactly help van Gaal's cause. It was always going to be a difficult task to rebuild the side Fergie left but he has underachieved thus far, in my view, especially as they have the biggest wage bill in the division. I found it hilarious the other week that Van Gaal said they 'lacked a 20 goal a season striker' even though he'd been playing one in midfield...
I think what makes the situation worse for United, is before this season began, everyone said they need to make major signings, bring in something like 5 players at least, and it's exactly what they have done spending over 200 million, and yet it still hasn't worked out. Even before they made their signings they still needed more, so not only do they still require more signings, the signings they did make to sort the situation out hasn't worked out either! And now they need signings in other positions which they may have not needed before, such as in the striking department as it's obvious RVP is past it, and then Falcao who was supposed to take them to the next level has become a total flop. The biggest lesson to learn from all this is that it's shown that it's easy saying yeah we need to buy 5-6 players and get us back on track, but getting it done is not as easy. United are still a very long way from where they were and where they want to be, once again they still look like a team that needs 5-6 signings, but finding those players and then making them fit isn't just going to work on its own....Also with them losing some revenue, can they keep going out and spending 200 plus million without securing top 4 football, on top of sponsorship contracts which have clauses saying certain amount of $$$ won't be paid without European football?
Holidaying in Thailand but nice to know I'm missed I was going to bring you back a ladyboy but I remembered you already have D-Minus?
Classy from United fans http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/danny-welbeck-targeted-death-threats-5303936
Not sure about the figures but the articles i read (on Sky and United sites) both said the wage bill had gone down by 2.8% from last season.
Total balloons, I loved Welbeck when he played for us and my opinion of him hasn`t changed. He is a red to the core and always put in 100% effort for us, i wouldn`t expect him to pass up the chance of an open goal and see no reason why he shouldn`t celebrate putting his new team into a cup semi-final. If we had to lose last night Danny would be the one i wanted to score the winning goal
Agreed. He is one of those players fans United and Arsenal can be proud of. He grew up loving United as his local team and he is not one who will pretend that Arsenal is his love and he had wanted to play for them all his life. He is a professional and there is no reason why he can't play with the same enthusiasm and intensity as he did for United. If ****ing Valencia gives him a goal, why should he refuse it? And he did celebrate as he should (not over the top like Adebayor or Ince when he went to the RS). When he plays I want him to score (although not against United) as I still consider him as one of ours...
I would love to say he is here for the money but the lad is trying, he makes some great runs (many of which are missed) but when he gets the ball he just hasn`t got the ability anymore. Hope he can get back to his best at some point where ever he ends up.
To be honest, he's just in the wrong team. Slot him into our team and see him go. He will start smashing them in.
Falcao looks well off the pace at the moment. Not sure if it's a long recovery from injury or his confidence being shot. The 17-year-old that was marking him yesterday came closer to scoring, seeing one come back off the bar.
