Sorry to point out the glaringly obvious, the more chances you create the better opportunities to score you have. This does not apply to possession.
That's a very simplistic view. What constitutes a chance for one thing. Any ball played into the box? 2 passes and a punt for 40 yards? Not all chances are equal, some are down right wasteful. We've created some very good chances in recent games and failed to take them. All would have won us the games too but they weren't taken. Herrera should have won us the game today.
Well just to put it in context Arsenal and City have created twice as many chances (about 160+ each). Even if we agree that some chances are punts up field or whatever, that's still a massive difference in terms of what we can all agree are proper chances. They've also scored a good 6 to 10 goals more in the league. It's a numbers game at the end of the day. You have to create so many more to score that many goals. If we're only creating 1 chance per game, we really are restricting our ability to score. We basically need to be converting 100% of the time which is unrealistic.
City and Arsenal are years ahead of us though. They are adding to established squads rather than rebuilding. So you would expect their play to be better than ours is. Eventually we will catch up, even surpass as they have to replace players . City have started to do this already.
How about Southampton, West Ham and even Leicester??? Are they years ahead? All created more than half as many chances as we have and scored more. It's fairly straight forward the correlation and is the basics of any football team. Defend, create chances, score goals, win games (not trying to be patronising but just saying all teams play to create goalscoring opportunities, even the likes of those mentioned above)
All will finish miles behind us, score less (OK, maybe not in Leicester case) and concede many more. Saints are not no, they're similar to us tbh. So much change in such a short space of time. Theyve spent huge money as well in rebuilding their side (for any club, never mind saints). We do need to create more. There's no hiding from it. Van Gaal comments on it almost every week so he sees the issue and isn't blind to it. It's clearly not quote as easy to fix as some think. Memphis is out of form and you summed Young up in the match day thread. Mata isn't a pacey player and Rooney's ****e right now. So we have 19 year old Martial, Herrera who is hit and miss just now and Lingard carrying us. I'm not sure what LvG can do in October. Nobody would have expected so many to be out of form in one area. Half our attackers are playing ****e. That's the reality of it.
I think that's harsh on the players. They're playing the way the manager wants. If it's a case of the players out of form, we'd see the same turgid stuff from Chelsea or Liverpool under Rodgers. But no, their problems are entirely different. Today, West Ham played badly, their players had a poor game, but they didn't pass it about and create nothing all game. Players out of form don't dictate your tactical play, the manager does that. If anything, it's our manager's tactics that are hindering our players which is dictated by the effectiveness of the opposition.
There's no lack of effort. Under Moyes some players definitely gave up. It didn't bother me as I was done with Moyes by then but its wrong. Players should always give their all. Playing ****e doesn't mean your not trying. Every time I see Memphis, Rooney or the others pick up the ball, you can see the desire but not the quality.
I think Memphis is a victim of his age/immaturity. When he first arrived he looked quite good and very confident, he was in fact the centre of attention. Since Martial arrived and (to some extent) eclipsed him, he looks to be trying too hard and making very poor decisions between passing and taking people on, this is resulting in him losing the ball more often than not. He needs to settle down and get back to doing what he does instead of trying to emulate somebody else.
Vardy has scored in 2 more Premier League games this season than United. Vardy scored in 9/11, United scored in 7/11. I hate these stats but I feel I must share
It looks like your opening match of the season was a pointer for things to come because Spurs scored for you.
Only City and Arsenal have earned more points than us in 2015 according to sky. 55 points we've taken. Not too shabby really.
