Match Day Thread City v United

I kind of sympathise with Ten Hags reasoning with Ronanldo, a man of his standing and respect in the game shouldn't have a 6 goal mauling inflicted on his record when none of it was his fault.
Not sure on your assessment of the Varane injury, i think he has more about him than that.

 

He should have played through it then.

It didn't seem that bad, and I got the impression he didn't fancy the second half.

Could be wrong of course.

Hopefully it does prove to be nothing as his replacements don't bear thinking about.

 

You play through something that's not that bad it can quickly become bad. I would rather lose him for half a game we have already been trounced in than for a few games we have a chance of winning.
Good call in my opinion.

 

One of the most urgent things that TenHag has to sort out is the extraordinary fragility of the team. No decent team folds like this. We just collapsed “like a pack of cards”. Almost comparable to Brentford. We don’t seem to be able to fight back whenever we fall behind.

 

if you are going to name names of those who were **** and completely out of it, we ought to give a dishonourable mention to Sancho Antony and Rashford.

TenHag has to beat some ****ing backbone into those snowflaky overpaid layabouts who give up as soon as the going gets tough.

 

I did mention those names!

Well, bar Antony who I gave a bit of leeway to as it was his second game for us and he probably expected his midfield to be the source of possession for him, not for City.

 

The worst one was Rashford, who visibly gave up when we went a couple down. This is the one who is local and so is supposed to 'get' what a derby is all about.

It's no wonder Ronaldo is sat there shaking his head when he sees the bloke who is playing in his place bottling it (again) before our eyes.

I kind of get what Ten Hag is saying about chucking Ronaldo on when we're four nil down as not the right thing to do, but hindsight says he should have been on the pitch at the start.

We know he's not going to be awe struck at Man City ffs.

They need a collective kick up the arse, this has set us back to where we were after the Brentford game and they need to get back on it sharpish.

 

When " the going gets tough ".

Perhaps you should try to sign Billy Ocean.

 

Ah " hindsight ". Be nice if we all possessed it.

 

At least we had Martial back and he still provided glimpse of what he can do for the team. And we’ve also got three difficult matches out of the way with only 7 matches played. Next time we play City, the team will be better in place in terms of form and identity.

 

Beating City would've been a bonus, but losing to them isn't going to factor into us finishing Top 4.

This season is all about building a team, becoming tactically better, and developing a winning mentality against the majority of the other teams in the league, not City. That's what will decide Top 4.

 

When we beat Arsenal, the media still credited Arsenal. You would Arsenal had won that game 3-1. So of course they lost their sht and wrote about “how horrible” we were after actually losing to City.

ETH simply needs to go about his building efforts quietly this season and win every time that we are expected to win, especially playing at OT. Compete to get results when we have been written off. After that, the league table will work itself out from there.

 

We can't lose sight of the fact this season was about improving performances, and we are a work in progress... against clubs who already have a head start on us for those Top 4 places.

It's not going to be easy. City will win the league. That leaves 3 places out of United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Spurs, Chelsea.

 

That's why Casemiro needs to play boys.

Disposessed for Everton's goal, admittedly, but has run it since.

 

Not enamoured by that 2nd half performance. Don't understand why we play with the handbrakes on against **** opposition. Everton were fcking woeful. So open through that midfield and we're playing 3 yard passes in cul de sacs when there's spaces all over the pitch.

 

We did actually score a third that was ludicrously disallowed.

That might have altered your thinking, and there then also wouldn't have been that nervy unnecessary backs to the wall last five minutes.

Thought it was a comfortable win myself.

 

It's as Ten Hag just said in his post match interview. He said there were things we still need to improve and then said "There were spaces we didn't exploit. We need to look at that next. In the transition points."

Agree with this. We won back possession and far too often tried to play triangles in tight spaces rather than looking at the players in space who could've quickly got forward and got into the box. Still feels like we're holding back rather than being ruthless.

 

Tbf Joe Cole just summed up perfectly. This is a work in progress. There's players in there that won't feature in the long term plans for ETH, but they're in there to do a job, and as they drop in players to replace them with each transfer window then the team will build and compete for the top trophies.

Still though, in games like this against an Everton side that were so poor, there's nothing to stop us ripping them apart.

 

I was expecting a difficult game against Everton and we got it, still expected the win though.
Casimero is going to take some bedding in to the PL, he has plenty of ability and vision but seems quite a bit off the pace which surprises me because the Spanish league is probably the closest to the PL pace wise (given time on ball).

 

I caught a bit a of the second half. At one point we had the ball on the left hand side right at the half way line. The Everton players were so pedestal that I thought maybe the ref had blown the whistle for something, but he hadn’t. They were literally not closing us down but in response, it looked like we were equally pedestal by just moving the ball around with no real tenacity and no intent to rapidly penetrate them.

I think this is a game we could have used to build our poor goal difference given how poor Everton were.