On point 2) What I think is that after we play every team (unless they win) we read the same thing about final balls, knock downs and one twos not coming off or not quite finding players. It is of course co-incidence and we Southampton fans have to be thankful that this co-incidence means that shots on target (if many shots at all) against us this season are so low or we'd have been thrashed most weeks. On point 1) What I think is that after we play every team (unless they win) we read the same thing about midfielders not crossing the half way line or not enough players getting into the box. It is of course co-incidence and we Southampton fans have to be thankful that this co-incidence means that shots on target (if many shots at all) against us this season are so low or we'd have been thrashed most weeks. Of course if that co-incidence hadn't happened then we'd be down near the bottom. Some of us have this strange idea that our midfield 3 is one of the reasons why opposition teams midfielders get pushed deeper and also those 3 combined with our superb defensive unit being the reason why we concede so few shots on target. Foolish of us I know because if so the media would say that [insert team name] were stopped from playing well by Southampton rather than [insert team name] had a bad day which we (again) took advantage of. I also read De Gea is top of the goalie rankings isn't he? Forster will never get there because he hardly has to make a save. You should be happy knowing your goalie is so good because we don't know if Forster is any good yet. Oh for a world without co-incidence. BTW. There are still loads of points left this season. Saints are going to have to match the first half to get top4 and that will be a very big ask. Not impossible but hard.
I will counter that with the fact we have won tge title with 78 points previously. A tally that in many other seasons wouldn't be good enough for the top 3. City won the title wil less points than we did the year previous. Points tallies mean very little. You get rewarded for the position. I would much rather be 4th than 6th as Moyes was at this stage. Hopefully this will end the silly comparison which means nothing except it sells a few ****e newspapers.
Until the season ends, and we know your finishing position, its the only comparison that CAN be made.
Not really. After 21 games of this season, LVG is fourth After 21 games of last season, Moyes was seventh That's the only comparison that really matters. If you start comparing points without context, then you might as well say that LVG has only one point less than we had at this stage of the 98/99 season.
Regardless, I think you should be okay for top 4, which will obviously piss on Moyes. Southampton.....still not 100% convinced they will stay top 4. My top 4 prediction has always been Chelsea City Arsenal United And I still think it will be that.
However, if Moyes had been in place, and got the same results this as last season, he would have been 4th too wouldn't he? As I said he was not only unlucky with his own matches (last minute goals conceded, deflections, GK errors etc) but also the teams competing for Europe were too damn consistent, unlike this season...so far anyway.
Well, unless Southampton see it out and OR Spurs or Liverpool go on a really good run of results, then who is there is displace you? I think the former is more likely, that Southampton will stick it out and keep a top 4 spot, even then I cannot see them finishing above Arsenal. Really at the moment 3rd and 4th is anyones out of United, Arsenal, Spurs, Southampton, Liverpool and West Ham. But if I had to pick 2 of those 6 to finish the highest, its Arsenal and United.
Yes Moyes was 7th and VG is 4th. However VG is 12 points off top spot and Moyes was only 10. So it's swings and roundabouts really. It depends how you want to dress the stats up to suit your argument. It still doesn't cover up the fact that VG is making big tactical errors game after game. Why is this tool persisting with the 352 formation? It is such a dumb formation it is unreal. It just leaves the team with very little width, as the wide man is to busy ****ing defending. Then all our good attacking players, Rooney, Mata, Di Maria etc are all operating each other's space in the middle which makes us easy to defend against. This is why we are drawing so many games, as our midfield is so predictable to play against, and our only man who is ever in space is bloody Valencia, a player who is totally useless these days
Thats what I am saying, and you are only currently 4 points above 7th place right now, so either way you dress it, its not a big improvement at all.....marginal.....
Lets deal only in reality. No ifs or buts. Position matters and we are in a better position in a more balanced and equal league. Last season had 6 teams fly away from everyone else. This time the other 14 have caught up. Is there one easy game at all now? Not for me. This means the league is more competitive and therefore each point is harder to achieve. Lets also not forget moyes rode the fergie wave for the first half of last season. The players still had his mentality of never die. Lvg inherited the moyes mentality which, if i am honest, demonstrates that moyes can change a club quicker than van gaal. That is no positive thing. Very much tye opposite. Building and destroying sandcastles etc... Oh, and stop apologosing for moyes.
3 positions higher. Thats all you ever nees to know. As long as that's the case in may, well done van gaal. Cleaned up tye horrific mess from last season against all the odds.
We may well be 4th now, but it isn't exactly comfortable. Within a week or 2 we could easily be 7th if results go against. The only reason we are 4th is because Arsenal and Liverpool have sunk down to our level from last season, hence why the likes of Southampton and West Ham are amongst us. The team really isn't showing much improvement from last season, and this is without the distraction of CL football. I do think VG will turn it around, but I'm not going to delude myself into thinking that things are going well so far, as they clearly aren't
So Arsenal and liverpool picking up less points isnt in anyway down to tye league being strong across the board? And we could just as easily be comfortable in the top 4 2 weeks from now. Bored of the negative rubbish tbh. Weve lost once in 11 games, winning 7. Along with city its the best run this season. Get a grip
I'm judging the whole season up until now. I don't agree that the rest of the league has got stronger. I believe only the top 2 have, where as Arsenal and Liverpool have dropped since last season, and we've slightly improved, though not 150 million pounds worth of improvement
Take away Arsenal, Spurs, Everton and Liverpool and all the other clubs have become much stronger. There isnt one side who isnt capable of beating another. The sides that have found this out to their cost are the sides named above. As for the £150million investment. Averaging out appearances. They have featured in 7 games per player. 1/3 of our season. Van Gaal has for the majority of the season been using Moyes team minus Evra, Vidic and Rio. he simply hasnt had them available. I was disappointed that he stuck with 352 yesterday. With almost everyone back (not fit, match fitness comes with games and several players were returning from a long spell out) I was looking forward to 433. I do think he has very little faith in the defence (cant blame him, hes tryign to protect it as much as possible and hope we create a chance to win the game imo) which has a negative effect on the attack and midfield. Now we could go out all guns blazing, we would look fantastic. However another Leicester could occur at any moment. I honestly dont think LvG wants that to happen and thus while the defence remains as it is, he will continue to protect it. we are heavily linked with Hummels right now. Fingers crossed either he, or someone of similar quality comes in during January. Once hes got faith that the defence can be trusted then all the attacking talent can and will be unleashed.
If You obviously feel Southampton aren't getting the credit they deserve but there's no need to look for it where it doesn't exist. If you've read any of the half a dozen posts I've made about how well Southampton played on this board, the match thread on your Southampton board and on other boards, you'll know I give Saints the credit they deserve. BUT my comments that you've picked up on were focusing on our play not yours. Coincidence that I happen to be doing that on a match thread on a United board?? If you look at the majority of the game (particularly the first half) we didn't just dominate possession but also territorial advantage. The credit to Southampton was the organised defence which maneuvered and coped very well. What we lacked (and needed) in order to overcome that, was support for Di Maria and RVP and that should have been there from Rooney and others. And although your midfield were stalwart, there were plenty of times, particularly from the right (and often on the counter) when balls were played into pockets of space in the centre and we simply didn't have the runners to take advantage. Don't really see why you're getting upset about me looking at my team's shortcomings, you played the perfect away game, and you won, well done. What else do you want.
Good shout I think you and I must be the two biggest fans of Herrera. While Di Maria brings the individual brilliance, I can see Herrera as the more creative player. He has been benched so often since the Hull game, that I began to wonder whether there was something I was missing, but the truth is there's no excuse for not starting him. And IF LVG is judging him on substitute performances then that is so unfair (like against Stoke last week iirc), it's just a different dynamic. As for Rooney in CM, I said this weeks ago when he first played him there against Newcastle. He cannot control the game and is not good enough to knit play and break down teams. At 0-0 against Newcastle he looked completely ineffective. It was only once we'd scored and Newcastle were chasing the game that Rooney became more effective and that was only because he was making forward runs on the counter almost like his usual AM role. In short, Rooney doesn't have the tactical awareness or guile to control a game and pull strings from a CM position. He never did under Fergie and he doesn't now. This myth has been perpetuated by TV pundits and it is awful. Rooney needs to do what he does best, not in CM, not out on the wing, not LB (all roles where he can "do a job" bcos of the versatile player he is), but as a forward.
I pick up on the constant statements by the 'big teams' supporters that they failed to do something rather than were stopped from doing it. Yes Rooney is wasted where he was played and yes you got room down the right in the first half and when Blind went to LB after Shaw went off you started to have some luck there too but the reason there was not much in the middle when you had that space on the right in the first half was because RVP and Mata and Rooney were tied up trying to keep the ball in the centre third and start/continue things. Di Maria was in there because he is not a forward and his second nature was to be in there. Rooney did what he does all the time even when he is the 'lone striker'. He comes back deep to get the ball and try to do too much. Both for Man U and England he needs to be told to stay up front. Van Gaal has maybe decided he isn't disciplined enough to do that and opted to let him roam. Its not just you. Someone above says 3-5-2 is not good? Worked for us against Everton. The right tactics/formation is different for each game. Another says that you put a run together of 1 loss in 10 and only Man City have achieved that. Saints went on a run of 1 defeat in 14 games earlier this season. 11 of those were wins. Does that not match it? Taking out the league cup games it changes to 1 loss in 11 league games? Only Man City have matched yours? Another says the only reason that Saints and West Ham are up there is because Liverpool and Arsenal are dropping points. Not because we've been winning a lot of games then. I do concede that if we had 39 points at this stage last season we would only be 6th or 7th but as above that is by the by. This is this season and we are beating the teams that others are losing to. So whilst we do get back handed through gritted teeth credit it isn't the credit we deserve. Yes we are punching above our weigt but we aren't up there through luck. We are up there because we have a great first 11 and not a bad 15. If we look past that 15 then we will struggle and I agree with another poster above in that Arsenal and Man Utd are most likely to be 3rd / 4th because it will be very hard for us to match our first half of the season again to maintain that position but I wouldn't rule it out because every week those doubts get 1 game closer to being quashed.
I never said it was "rather than" though. I think it was a combination of both. I agree with your second paragraph But about Rooney coming deep for United. He did that last season (and the season before) bcos our midfield was ****. The same can be said for why he does it for England tbf. Not his fault, and it weakens him as a player. BUT this season we have some decent creativity in midfield. Di Maria, Herrera (who should have started), Mata are all quality. There's no reason for him to fck around in the middle. 3-5-2 is a problem because LVG seems to be pig-headed about it playing it even though it doesn't suit our attack. There's no real advantage in wing-backs when your central midfield is compromised as a result. For United we rely on wing play to create space for our midfielders. That's always been our traditional style of play. But we're sacrificing that with 3 CB's and it has a double-whammy on our attack. Extra cover/sweeper role is needed and fewer mids getting forward. And against a decent side, the wing backs get pegged back and then we can't get out of our own half. There seemed to be a belief that when all our defenders were fit, he'd go back to 4 at the back. Instead he wants to be stubborn about it. Our best formation with the players we have is imo a 4-4-2 with a diamond, but against Southampton I'd even been happy with a 4-2-3-1. Our run takes nothing away from yours. And I can't comment on the Arsenal/Liverpool comments bcos I didn't make them. But I agree with you. Neither Arsenal nor Liverpool are having anything other than their typical season. So not sure where the "under-performing" sentiment comes from. For Saints, there was a blip a few weeks ago where I thought, right that's it. But the last 5/6 games have got you right back in it and I hope you get top 4 but not at our expense obviously. In fact, now that we won't be playing you again I am counting on you to stuff both of our opposition. BTW Koeman has been a revelation. Last I saw of him was when he managed Valencia and the club was in turmoil. It was a mess, financial problems, he pissed off the dressing room (legends of the club were sacked) and it all went horribly wrong. Been really impressed with what he's doing at Southampton.
