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Post by Deleted on Oct 28, 2018 18:48:01 GMT
The thing about the word ‘preposterous’ is that in a football context, it can be used to describe a moment of pure unexpected joy. If you see an overhead kick or a lob described as preposterous, you know it’s going to be worth going gif-hunting. This has become so common that it’s easy to forget that behaving preposterously is not necessarily a good thing. I would not take it as a compliment is someone described this piece as preposterous. It is not a word you want to hear in a job interview. The point is that there is a point where one interpretation spills over into the other, and it is beginning to feel like Paul Pogba is just reaching that tipping point. He is a player who is capable of reaching both extremes of preposterousness in large doses, often with very little in between. This was such a performance. His movement and passing in the first half were as good as anyone has produced in the Premier League this season. At his finest, Pogba alone is capable of tearing teams apart nearly as well as the entire midfields for the super-drilled, super-fluent Chelsea and Liverpool sides that currently sit atop the Premier League. Yet this is also a player who sent an early attempt at a long-shot curling wildly out of play for a throw-in, and who dallied and showboated his way to striking an utterly awful penalty into exactly the kind of area that goalkeepers relish. Had he not tucked away the rebound off Jordan Pickford’s so calmly, he would have been greeted off the pitch by Simone Zaza, Robert Pires, John Terry and Riyad Mahrez and invited to join the the Laughably Shit Penalty Society. That’s the thing with Pogba though: he did put it away. And then later, in the second half, just as he seemed to be winding up for one of his habitual shots-into-the-first-defender-from-25-yards shots, he instead squared the ball perfectly for his countryman Anthony Martial to finish flawlessly into the far bottom corner. But then he was also the man who was caught dicking about in the midfield, allowing Everton to steal the ball and start the move that resulted in Everton’s own penalty. Pogba has had both his disciples and his detractors since returning to Manchester United, very often within the same game, and this performance was the perfect encapsulation of why that is. Those who stick up for him might reasonably ask why the Sky cameras and commentators immediately placed all the attention on the Frenchman after Chris Smalling recklessly threw himself into a grossly-mistimed tackle on Richarlison, rather than onto the former England man. His naysayers, naturally, would retort that Smalling wouldn’t have been put in that position had Pogba been a little less…well, Pogba. In scrutinising both Pogba’s style of play and the response it gets from others, I am often reminded of David Ginola, another brilliant Frenchman who played on these shores two decades ago. Despite his undoubted talent, Ginola was never properly understood or appreciated by the more old-fashioned and/or tactically conservative managers he played under: former France manager Gerard Houllier infamously scapegoated him for his country’s failure to make the 1994 World Cup – Ginola having decided to cross when playing out time in the corner would have been adequate – and both Kenny Dalglish and George Graham quickly grew infuriated by high single-mindedness and sold him. But even Graham could appreciate there were times when they needed a bit of Ginola’s magic, just as constant Pogba critic Graeme Souness was able to offer the more modern Frenchman some rare praise at half time. As Mourinho’s United look to cast off the (entirely justified) accusations of over-caution and self-defeating conservatism, they will need to do likewise. Pogba will sometimes be infuriating. He will sometimes be brilliant. He will often be preposterous. But with a player of his talent, that trade-off will quite often be worthwhile. Spot on, but no way you make this much sense in one post, where did you copy this from
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Post by ScholesEvilTwin on Oct 28, 2018 18:48:32 GMT
Thanks for the win Mr.Jose Monster. You should be ashamed.
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Post by . on Oct 28, 2018 18:51:24 GMT
Happy with the result, regardless of my feelings on Jose.
Martial should be the second name on the team sheet after Dave!!
Pogba's run up, shuffling before he takes a pen makes no difference whatsoever. He scored but I found that ridiculous.
Smalling challenge for the penalty was barmy
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Post by Deleted on Oct 28, 2018 18:51:30 GMT
Ignoring the Juventus game which was against far superior opposition, the last 3 league games have shown this side is pretty good when playing closer to their potential.
Hoping we kick on now.
Martial and Pogba were outstanding (for the most part). Lindelof was excellent once again. Fred needs to be starting more often, gives us much needed legs in midfield and feel he could be a real asset at both ends of the pitch going forward if he gets a proper run in the team.
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Post by Rustin Cohle on Oct 28, 2018 18:55:49 GMT
Some thoughts:
- Martial MOTM for me. Their full back was absolutely terrified of him. Our penalty and the two chances either side of it all massively involved him. Cracking goal. Couldn’t believe he missed his chance at the end though, really expected him to bury it.
- Bar his awful runup (and the fans were not happy with him for it) Pogba was great until he got silly and put us in the position for the penalty. Played some great stuff and kept us going forward a lot. Just a real shame he then had a big hand in putting us under pressure (not that Everton really did much).
- That said, Smalling also had a pretty decent game until the pen where I thought he was totally braindead.
- Rashford did ok in many parts of his job today, but he missed the chance to keep Lukaku on the bench. Must do better.
- Lukaku was poor. His miss was atrocious and I felt a bit sorry for him because you could see he was devastated. But he had none of the energy and running I saw last season. Once Pogba had the ball and was looking to cross and he stood dead still by the D. For Martial’s chance at the end instead of running behind him in case of a rebound he just stood still. It looked like he was injured or something but i don’t think he is. Just really weird.
- Thought Lindelof looked assured. Definietly a great defender in there.
- Didn’t think Shaw played well. Didn’t offer much going forward and panicked a couple of times at the back, but also made a couple of good tackles too.
- Thought Mata had one of his worst games for us. Didn’t get much off and some awful corners too.
- Thought Young was better. Still not a starting RB, but better.
- Fred was decent. I really want to see him get a run of games. Matic was ok too though I thought he gave away some silly fouls.
- I think we were playing a diamond for a lot of the match, and I really liked it. I think it suits our squad and we should give it a real go. The two up top thing works well for Martial and Rashford and there’s other options too.
- I thought OT was a bit quieter than other times I’ve been up (admittedly not in about a year). Perked up when we started olaying good stuff in fairness, but still pretty quiet.
- I thought Everton were pretty poor. They missed a couple of huge chanes - that Andre Gomes header early on could have changed things - but overall they didn’t threaten much.
- That should have been more comfortable than it was. If Rashford takes his chance it’s 3-0 and we could easily get a fourth. Instead the last 15 automatically became nervy even if not much came of it. A step forward, but not a huge one. That said, it was a fun game and bar the first fifteen and last fifteen I was pretty happy with how we were playing. Could have been better but was still good, and better than most recent games. If we play like that every week we’d get top 4 (if our start to the season hasn’t already fucked us too badly).
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Post by Rustin Cohle on Oct 28, 2018 19:08:40 GMT
Why on earth Martial isn't on penalties I don't know? Seems the natural choice to me, even Mata seems a better choice than Pogba. I dislike his pens as well. He tries to wait until the ‘keeper commits and it’s terrible when it doesn’t work. I just wish someone would twat them top corner, I thought Pogba would but clearly not. IIRC Herrera takes a good one, would like to see him take if he’s on the pitch. The crowd groaned massively throughout his whole run up so maybe he got the message. Edit: what I want to know what Pogba thinks his run up achieves? I genuinely don’t see the purpose. To make the ‘keeper commit early? It does the opposite, he doesn’t have to move until the last second. It’s just so strange.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 28, 2018 19:12:41 GMT
Why on earth Martial isn't on penalties I don't know? Seems the natural choice to me, even Mata seems a better choice than Pogba. I dislike his pens as well. He tries to wait until the ‘keeper commits and it’s terrible when it doesn’t work. I just wish someone would twat them top corner, I thought Pogba would but clearly not. IIRC Herrera takes a good one, would like to see him take if he’s on the pitch. The crowd groaned massively throughout his whole run up so maybe he got the message. The more he does it the more I expect him to miss. Just more showboating, don't understand it. Just makes him look like a tool. But then he spends the rest of the game running it. He's great on the ball but at times he tries doing far too much and ends up making a costly mistake that he doesn't have to, he cuts that out and you've got a wonderful player that will control most games, as today has proved.
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Post by Rustin Cohle on Oct 28, 2018 19:22:47 GMT
This team is ridiculous. Should be a goals for padding exercise and instead we’re holding on for dear life. No coincidence Liverpool’s GD is about 20 above ours. We’ve totally lost the ability to score a few and play for goal difference. And we had it this time last year with several games where we scored 4. Not sure how we fix it.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 28, 2018 19:29:57 GMT
This team is ridiculous. Should be a goals for padding exercise and instead we’re holding on for dear life. No coincidence Liverpool’s GD is about 20 above ours. We’ve totally lost the ability to score a few and play for goal difference. And we had it this time last year with several games where we scored 4. Not sure how we fix it. To be fair they've only scored 3 more than us. Its the goals we've unnecessarily leaked that been our problem. Today should have been a clean sheet but a lapse in judgement fucked that up. We seem to get far enough ahead then worry too much about holding a comfortable lead. We can't afford to do that with our defence. I'll give him his due, Pickford made some solid stops today.
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Post by Rustin Cohle on Oct 28, 2018 19:33:03 GMT
No coincidence Liverpool’s GD is about 20 above ours. We’ve totally lost the ability to score a few and play for goal difference. And we had it this time last year with several games where we scored 4. Not sure how we fix it. To be fair they've only scored 3 more than us. Its the goals we've unnecessarily leaked that been our problem. Today should have been a clean sheet but a lapse in judgement fucked that up. We seem to get far enough ahead then worry too much about holding a comfortable lead. We can't afford to do that with our defence. I'll give him his due, Pickford made some solid stops today. True. Replace Liverpool with City!
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Post by Deleted on Oct 28, 2018 19:36:01 GMT
To be fair they've only scored 3 more than us. Its the goals we've unnecessarily leaked that been our problem. Today should have been a clean sheet but a lapse in judgement fucked that up. We seem to get far enough ahead then worry too much about holding a comfortable lead. We can't afford to do that with our defence. I'll give him his due, Pickford made some solid stops today. True. Replace Liverpool with City! Only 9 more. We'll make that up when we play Cardiff
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Post by Sméagol on Oct 28, 2018 19:58:02 GMT
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Post by Karma on Oct 28, 2018 20:23:38 GMT
This team is ridiculous. Should be a goals for padding exercise and instead we’re holding on for dear life. No coincidence Liverpool’s GD is about 20 above ours. We’ve totally lost the ability to score a few and play for goal difference. And we had it this time last year with several games where we scored 4. Not sure how we fix it. They are on 20 PL goals, we are on 17. Our defence is the difference, ie it's shite.
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Post by ScholesEvilTwin on Oct 28, 2018 20:56:38 GMT
Lies.
Our defence is perfect. Our unofficial DoF said so.
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Post by Karma on Oct 28, 2018 21:01:51 GMT
Lies. Our defence is perfect. Our unofficial DoF said so. Unofficial? That's news to him, the wanker!
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