That'd do for me. I think given the weaker opposition (he says, knowing full well what'll happen) we can afford to take a bit more of a risk going forward.
Powell is ineffective in midfield. Christ, he was brought in as a striker for the very reason that he's not good in midfield.
They played ok against us last time. The left winger gave Odubajo a hard time. No real goal threat but they try and play football.
If the players are in the same mind-set as a lot of our fans they're in for a ****ing shock, MK weren't the most skilful side we've come up against but until Diame's late goal there was always a chance they could have bagged an equaliser, as you say in your post, they try and play football and have a keen young coach in Karl Robinson who'll certainly have them fired up.
Completely agree on both counts. McGregor Odubajo Dawson Davies Robertson Snodgrass Livermore Huddlestone Clucas Akpom Hernandez Or perhaps 352 McGregor Maguire Dawson Davies Odubajo Livermore Huddlestone Snodgrass Robertson Akpom Hernandez I'd still like to fit Diame in there somewhere though. Our squad lacks balance.
Did he not score most of his goals when when playing in mid-field ? I seem to recall Bruce mentioning he may well be useful as both a striker & an attacking, goal scoring, creative mid-fielder. Perhaps he's not been effective because he's not in tune with his team mates, or vice-versa. One thing I've noticed is that he is always looking for someone to get the ball to. Often as not he fails to find a team-mate on the same wavelength. Not sure who is to blame here , him or his compatriots !
Scored his goals as a striker for Wigan, and was terrible for Leicester and sent back to United when playing as a midfielder.
He's not regularly played as a striker since he left Crewe, he played in midfield for everyone, including Wigan (he barely played for Leicester at all).
And yet he's been playing there for United and we signed him as a striker? Pretty sure he played up top for Wigan.
Maybe wrong here, just got a feeling that in the run in to the end of the season, if things are going our way we'll see a lot of Abel being subbed as SB will be bricking it that he picks an injury up, as the back up cupboard, looks quite bare.
He played in a forward role, behind the striker, at Crewe. United bought him to play in the midfield. He likes Big Macs.
Correct and if you check out his skills and goals video when he was at Wigan, you can see he's spending most of his time in midfield. And he's an alcoholic.
3-5-2 for me also; why play a back four when the opposition will play with a single striker? Apart from switching Jake and Snoddy I would go with your selection; that said it won't happen. Brucey will play his star pupil Clucas who for me has been way off contributing anything significant for a month now, along with missing a hat full of clear goal scoring chances. I also like Mo as a player but has been inconsistent of late, bench for me along with Meyler, the sooner Meyler gets Tuesdays game 'out his system' the better.
This ^^^^ is probably the crux of it. There has been a distinct lack of variation in our approach. Typically Huddlestone getting the ball wide to Elmo or whoever's on the left side, followed by sometimes effective but mostly unproductive crosses to strikers who more often than not don't reach those crosses. There has been a dearth of penetrating passes through the channels for our front men to run onto down the middle, to either get a shot away or lay it back to someone from midfield following up. You can almost see Powell getting frustrated as he wants to release those kinds of centrally aimed passes, but whoever's up front are not in tune with that, which has to be a coaching issue.
we're not playing with enough pace on occasions to create opportunities for our forward to run into the space either behind their back line or between their back four and midfield; it's all too slow and predictable hence why we have problems to break down teams of late. Just a personal opinion.
