Match Day Thread Manchester United vs Arsenal - Matchday Thread

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Venue: Old Trafford
Date: Sunday 4th September 2022
KO time: 16:30 BST

Overall Record

Wins: 86
Losses: 100
Draws: 50

Last six meetings:

Arsenal 3-1 Manchester United
Manchester United 3-2 Arsenal
Arsenal 0-0 Manchester United
Manchester United 0-1 Arsenal
Arsenal 2-0 Manchester United
Manchester United 1-1 Arsenal

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If Casimero doesn't start i have you as winners in this game.

 

We have barely any fit midfielders, Ramsdale isn’t 100% either and although Zinchenko has travelled, I doubt he’ll start.

We also have a terrible record at your ground.

I’d take a draw to be honest.

 

Zinchenko and Odegaard both starting, that's a big plus!

Starting XI: Ramsdale, White, Saliba, Gabriel, Zinchenko, Lokonga, Xhaka, Saka, Odegaard, Martinelli, Jesus

Subs: Turner, Tierney, Smith-Rowe, Nketiah, Holding, Soares, Tomiyasu, Vieira, Marquinhos

 

anyone got a decent link?

 

As much as am hoping for win, am with Brunel and would take the draw and be happy to move on..

 

Damn that's annoying. Still think the goal first half SHOULD have stood.

United always get the luck though.

 

Not too fussed about that result. Far better than them. Not like the standard city and pool away fixtures of recent years when we get battered. Standard United counterattack is all they really still seem to have. Top of the league, onwards and upwards hopefully.

BUT still massively miss Partey. Possibly our most important player even if he's not the best. Just don't look as solid for the wins when he's not in the middle.

 

Frustrating loss. I just feel like whenever united best us, they never really play that well; I thought at 1-1 we would hold on for at least a point.

Oh well. Win all games outside of top 6 opposition and we’ll get top 4 - that’s the real target.

 

Disappointing to lose that one as I felt we played into Utd's hands by pushing for a goal and getting hit on the counter. We took the game to them, but got sucker punched.

Anyway, thought we were still looking decent and hopefully this setback will make the team even more determined not to lose again like that.

 

Cracking game guise. Reminded me of the old days when our games had that battle.

Obviously happy with the result, but I think you played very well. No problems with Top 4 imo.

Jesus was excellent, impressed far more than I expected having watched him at City.

Anyway should be interesting when we meet in the Europy final

 

On the balance of play, I think the scoreline flatters Man United and I thought we actually played very well for most of the game.

But ultimately, we’ve seen this story before at OT where we play well and don’t get what we deserve.

Also, whilst we had some good attacking moments, and created a lot, we didn’t defend well enough at key moments. There was a lot of naivety in our defending.

I think in hindsight Arteta will probably regret those subs as they were way too attacking when it was 2-1 and we completely lost our shape and control with those changes. Then United picked us off when we decided to push our back line that high up.

However, as much as I hate losing to United, I’m not too downbeat because we largely played well and didn’t go out with a whimper, like we usually tend to do at OT. Our record at that ground is wretched.

Saliba had his worst game in an Arsenal shirt, which says a lot, because he wasn’t even that bad yesterday.

However, I am concerned about Gabriel’s start to the season. Really not good enough from him.

Once Tomi’s fully fit, I’d consider putting him at RB, and putting White-Saliba as our centre-half pairing, with Gabriel benched.

 

We dominated that game 61% possession and something like 16 shots

The goal that VAR ruled out was soft as ****, you see those sorts of challenges 20 times in a game and they go unchecked, but because it was a goal, VAR has to try and find something wrong with it

That goal stands and I think we'd have gone on to win that game. But as has been mentioned, naive defending when we were chasing a goal and we got hit on the counter. Hopefully a lesson learned because I thought we deserved at least a point out of that game

 

Arsenal 16 shots 3 on target

United 10 shots 6 on target

You see where the extra couple of goals might have come from

 

I also think a lot of those shots you had were after you sucker punched us to make it 2-1 and we were pushing higher to get the equaliser. You were always going to get chances at that point with the gaps we left behind and the quality of Bruno, Eriksen, Rashford etc.

I won't begrudge you the win because, fundamentally, you took your chances, and we didn't. However, as I said, I don't think this loss was as bad as years gone by where we've put in a stinker of a performance.

Need to try and get 6 points out of Everton and Brentford now though, with the two Europa games sandwiched in between.

 

I think that's the point and links in to why I said earlier it reminded me of the games 15-20 years ago. It's not like back then if you lost against us you went away thinking you were **** and it highlighted deep problems or anything. Yeh granted you may have gone away thinking fck that's going to make the league title harder, but you're not at that level yet so imo gooners are still looking strong for their expectations this season.

I'll be honest, I'd have taken the draw. And even if we'd lost I wouldn't have been disheartened as we're already looking better than a year ago and heading in the right direction.

 

No where near mate, you were by far the better team for most of the match but we now seem to be gaining some defensive solidity as a base to allow the mids and forwards to do their job with more freedom.
Great game to watch and i have obviously come out of it happier than you but it could so easily have gone the other way and just a few weeks ago most definitely would have.

 

Stats can prove anything. Utd had 67% possession against Brentford, more shots on goal (15) and double the passes and touches too

having said that you played as well as we expected you to play. We expected you to have more of the possession and it was predictable that we would hit you on the counter.

 

Our issue in this game wasn't finishing though - we were just lacking the final ball.
We had more possession and created more chances as the away team.

 

Also Partey was a big miss - he's the one player we really don't have adequate cover for. Lokonga did OK actually but defensively he's still a little all over the place.

Good news is that he's expected back in a couple of weeks. As Ive already stated Arteta needs to give these players less game time not just throw them into every match as soon as they are training.