I know you fell out with me last time I said this, even though it's an unconscious bias (I emphasise that because you became so angry at the idea referees might ever be biased), but there is peer-reviewed research that says that crowd noise influences referees' decisions. I posted a link last time but you didn't read it then so I'm not going to find it again. Man U have noisy crowds at Old Trafford and probably one of the noisier sets of away fans. Therefore referees give them more decisions than otherwise. Vin
I accept that, it's someone suggesting that a referee is biased towards an individual team that I take offence to.
Except that he said And it's true. Much less likely to get a decision for the away team at Old Trafford because of the noise of the home fans. Vin
We had trouble scoring for long stretches last season as well. Mane was a threat and helped draw out defenses even when he wasn't scoring. And Pelle did a better job as a target man than people give him credit for. Everyone praised Long for his ability to pull defenders out of position. Which is fine and all, but the diamond doesn't inhibit his ability to do that. The problem is that plays slightly wider to exploit the gap between CB and FB, thereby pulling the CB out of position... who do we have who can exploit the vacated space? Last year we were better on the counter because of the speed of Long and Mane. We still had problems when teams packed in their defense. The two games we have played, Watford was looking to steal points, and having gone up 1 goal they were able to play 5 at the back and everyone behind the ball. Man U also went up earlier, and while there was no need for them to retreat into a shell, they also know that we lack goal-scorers, and they have the quality in Ibrahimovic to score without having to commit too much on attack. They just had to play mistake-free and stay solid at the back. No mistakes and some superstars upfront who can turn something into nothing is Mourinho's philosophy, so the match played right to his strengths. I think we need more firepower on attack. I felt that way even before we lost Mane. So while I'm not defending the diamond, I tend to believe that our problems are more personnel related than tactical. We can bring in a winger and go back to 4-3-2-1. Or we could bring in a Michu-type who can sneak in behind forwards and score some goals and possibly stay with the diamond. But either way, we need to bring in another goal threat-- most likely a player who can score himself, but perhaps a super-tricky dribbler who can operate in a crowd might do it as well. Even if Tadic can fill that role, we still need another player who can do it as well.
Not sure if it's been mentioned but Hojbjergs interview after the game impressed me yesterday. Very upfront and honest about the performance, which was really refreshing. I'll post it here for those who haven't heard it, apologies if it's already been discussed. +
... but we probably couldn't pay their wages as we have to abide by FFP regs. (Having said that I don't know how close we are to the FFP ceiling, but I suspect we don't have a lot of headroom) We need to increase our commercial income so we can pay higher wages.
I know there are some strange sports in the Olympics but I haven't seen any Closing Car Windows yet!!! Is it on the red button???
Oh, we could pretty easily pay a single player 150k p/w or some such. The current soft cap is at 67m; we can increase our wage bill by 7m over the previous season if we were below that. However, you can actually increase it by significantly more, if you can demonstrate that the increase came from the club's own revenues...increased commercial income (which we have added, with our new kit deal and shirt sponsorship) and player trading profit (which we have quite a bit of; it's not net transfer spend that counts for this). We have money that we can spend, if we so choose. If we were tight against FFP, that would mean that most teams around us were outright violating it, in many cases by a large amount. They aren't, and we aren't.
I was at the Sydney and the plastic count was high. Mrs S and I seemed to be the only true believers Richard the Chelsea fan (from London so that's ok) was friendly but I had to stop him telling me how good Pogba was even though it was true I suggested he might like to talk about Saints and I might look more interested, he took it well
Sorry, I have been offline. We were in the Sydney Arms. It will be better when we aren't playing one of the plastic magnets
Rather than spend £80M odd, I'd rather see us say 'no' to Mane, you can stay and see out your two years, then go for free. Might as well waste money on a proven entity. Personally, I'm glad we are not blowing money like others are doing, its dangerous & guarantees nothing. Perhaps the risks we should be taking are saying no to the leavers. The fees we got for Vic & Graz are getting smaller by the day. It all carries risk, but I prefer the risks you know. What a ramble.
But if we were to spend big it would be on the basis that we would sell before the end of their contact and recover some money. So forcing players to stay and losing 35m in transfer fees is not the same as spending 35m on a new player.
The more you spend, the less likely you are to make more money on the next transfer. No guarantee either way. I'm just happy the way we do it.....even though it sometimes leaves us short.
Saving money on transfers is a false economy if it costs you league places. Failure to get two good quality players before deadline day will almost certainly be expensive. On a different note, what really strikes me thinking back over these two games is how poor Davis has been and how benign we've been from set pieces. Anyone else think all out youth through the middle may be the answer? ------------ Forster ---------- Cuco - Fonte - VvD - Bertrand ----------- Romeu ------------ Hojbjerg ---------- JWP ----------- Tadic ------------- Redmond ------- Long
