vs. Barcelona (H) (CL) - Wednesday 10/04/19 20:00 BST

[caino]

said it before the game what will kill us is our inability to score from a couple of chances and them to score one of the only chances they get from bad defending.

ive never seen a worse performance from a full back than Young in this game. he shouldn't start another game again.

I have a glimmer of hope for next game we have to go all out attack. Lingard Rashford martial as the front 3 with pogba just behind.

[Deleted]

Apr 11, 2019 7:16:08 GMT redcase said:

Special mention to Mike Smalling, for breaking Messi's nose. After that he was genuinely anonymous. He broke Messi yesterday. Well done .

His anonymity after that coincided with Barcelona not actually doing that much in front of our goal. Once we had the midfield battle won they really weren't any more dangerous than we were.

[redcase]

Apr 11, 2019 7:22:11 GMT soapy said:

Apr 11, 2019 7:16:08 GMT redcase said:

Special mention to Mike Smalling, for breaking Messi's nose. After that he was genuinely anonymous. He broke Messi yesterday. Well done .

His anonymity after that coincided with Barcelona not actually doing that much in front of our goal. Once we had the midfield battle won they really weren't any more dangerous than we were.

We won a midfield battle against Barcelona . A phrase I never thought I'd utter.

[Deleted]

Apr 11, 2019 7:26:40 GMT redcase said:

Apr 11, 2019 7:22:11 GMT soapy said:

His anonymity after that coincided with Barcelona not actually doing that much in front of our goal. Once we had the midfield battle won they really weren't any more dangerous than we were.

We won a midfield battle against Barcelona . A phrase I never thought I'd utter.

Well they have just rebooted The Twilight Zone.

[redcase]

Apr 11, 2019 7:31:19 GMT soapy said:

Apr 11, 2019 7:26:40 GMT redcase said:

We won a midfield battle against Barcelona . A phrase I never thought I'd utter.

Well they have just rebooted The Twilight Zone.

Jordan Peele ? Sign me up .

[Chris]

A guy on Talksport said that only Dalot clapped the fans at the stadium last night after the game. Probably not a big deal, but kind of speaks volumes.

Hope he starts RB on Saturday and has a stormer so Ole sees that Young shouldn't start. God knows what he's seeing in him. Get rid of Fellaini but give Young a new deal. Madness.

[Deleted]

Apr 11, 2019 7:43:35 GMT Chris said:

A guy on Talksport said that only Dalot clapped the fans at the stadium last night after the game. Probably not a big deal, but kind of speaks volumes.

Hope he starts RB on Saturday and has a stormer so Ole sees that Young shouldn't start. God knows what he's seeing in him. Get rid of Fellaini but give Young a new deal. Madness.

If he doesn't start when Young is banned then we really do have a problem.

[On a break]

Fred did well again and hasn`t been given enough time to settle, sure he's made mistakes but who doesent? Young makes mistakes practically every time he touches the ball but starts each game without question, its bullshit.

[Deez]

Young has attempted 13 crosses in the last two games, zero have been successful

[Deez]

Suppose we did alright considering we had the Young handicap and Pogba can happily go to Madrid if they want him. Easily replaced

[Rustin Cohle]

Apr 10, 2019 22:23:05 GMT Paul said:

Would like to know that reasoning behind playing Dalot on the left when we have more than adequate cover there. Plus we should have started Martial on the left ahead of Shaw. Games like these aren't the type to experiment new things. Play your best XI from the start.

Lets hope its something Ole learns from and doesn't repeat. Unless players are injured then there's no excuse to not play the best line up we can in their correct positions.

I presume it was to double up on Messi when he drifted across.

[Rustin Cohle]

McTominay has been very good the past couple of games. He should play regularly between now and the end of the season, but we still need a player in his position in the summer.

I like him, he works hard and is improving. If he plays like he did last night every week then he'd be good enough to start for a title challenging side. But, to be honest, I doubt that he will. If he's starting for us in two years time, either he's cracked on significantly further than I expect, or we will still not be good enough to seriously challenge for the title.

For now though, he deserves more games so he can try and find that consistency. Play him until the end of the season, get a quality defensive midfielder in, and then if Scott overhauls them and plays like this every week, brilliant. If not, then maybe he can be on our bench, or start regularly at a mid-table club.

[kstandhand]

Apr 11, 2019 7:26:40 GMT redcase said:

Apr 11, 2019 7:22:11 GMT soapy said:

His anonymity after that coincided with Barcelona not actually doing that much in front of our goal. Once we had the midfield battle won they really weren't any more dangerous than we were.

We won a midfield battle against Barcelona . A phrase I never thought I'd utter.

Plenty of endevour ,zero creativity.

[Rustin Cohle]

www.football365.com/news/f365-says-ashley-young-is-man-utd-decline-incarnate

F365 says: Ashley Young is Man Utd decline incarnate…

It’s a sign of Manchester United’s status in 2019 that Steve McManaman spent the majority of the clash with Barcelona telling us that United were the “better team” and remarking that Lionel Messi was “human after all” as he was clearly having an “off night”. This was the Manchester United who failed to record a single shot on target at home; this was the off-colour Lionel Messi whose sumptuous cross led to the only goal of the game. In 2019, even the worst of Barcelona can beat the best of Manchester United without ever really breaking sweat.

Frighteningly, this was the best of United. They were energetic, organised and looked dangerous when they broke at speed. The central midfield of Fred and Scott McTominay was both compact and combative, Chris Smalling delivered on his promise to relish a potentially one-sided clash with Messi, and Diogo Dalot combined defensive and attacking duties on his ‘wrong’ side with the confidence of a footballer with considerably more experience. And yet they did not once test the Barcelona goalkeeper on a night when the Spanish side were incredibly poor by their own impossible standards. The suspicion is that they will not be this poor again and United have missed their chance to draw blood.

Standards have dropped so far since United lost to Barcelona in the 2011 final that many fans were simply happy to avoid a shellacking, keen to laud the performances of fringe players and not dwell too long on the fact that United created only one real chance in 90 minutes at Old Trafford, a header Dalot inexplicably put back across goal. For all the pressing, for all the energy, for all the endeavour, this was akin to Brighton restricting a below-par Manchester City to a 1-0 defeat. Pats on the head all around.

What could not be hidden by positive talk of United’s disciplined performance was a chronic lack of quality in the final third. When Darren Fletcher described one cross from Ashley Young as “strange”, who among those watching did not laugh? What would truly have been ‘strange’ was a cross that found a teammate, for that cross was one of 11 that did not reach its target. Young may bemoan a lack of bodies in the box, but in truth this was a tale of a 33-year-old former winger who should be nowhere near any United side. Not even this United side.

There was consternation among United fans when the club paid a considerable sum of money for Young in 2011, and the player himself admitted that it would be a “challenge” to establish himself in a team that had just reached the Champions League final. That he is their first-choice right-back almost eight years later should be a source of shame to those who have been charged with making decisions at Old Trafford over that period of sharp decline.

It’s painfully clear that United need to spend money this summer to take steps towards the European elite again, to go into such games as something other than the underdog, to not feel like playing five defenders is their only option even at Old Trafford, to not start games so passively that even a poor Barcelona side could not fail to score an early goal. United have not won a single game this season which they have started with a back three/five, and they have now tried seven times. It was a mistake from Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and yet you could see why he made that mistake; for all his bombastic talk of United’s storied history, he knows that this team currently lacks the quality to make the future look like anything but a pale imitation of the past.

There were positives even in defeat, and even in such a toothless defeat. But it’s a sad day when Manchester United go into a Champions League quarter-final looking for positives rather than a result.

[On a break]

^ spot on it pisses me off that many have accepted that our standards have not just dropped off they have plummeted.