vs. West Brom (A) (PL) - Sun 14/02/21 14:00 GMT

[viking22]

Yeah you'd imagine Liverpool will get their act together long before we do and Leicester also look pretty good value to finish above us. So much for progress.

When you look at our results with streaks of good or bad form it suggests there isn't a lot of coaching or tactical management going on. Our results are purely a function of the form of certain key players.

[gdmm]

Feb 14, 2021 17:17:36 GMT Stew said:

I’m sorry, but why has this become acceptable-

Solskjær: "I said we shouldn't be talked about [in the title race]. A compliment for the boys we got into position we are now. We won't let them [Manchester City] run away with it - we're playing them soon. We're not giving it away early - no we're not."

Akin to Moyes' "the sort of level we are aspiring to" crap, of which he was slated and rightly so. This is Manchester United, going for titles is a minimum requirement. Saying things like the above is a get out for both him and the players, most of who don't need an invite to shit the bed at the thought of going for the title. 

It has been said elsewhere that City have winners in their squad including the manager. Until we address that, we will be playing second fiddle to them.  

[Monty]

I hate to say it, but I genuinely can't think of a single legitimate reason to keep Ole around. I've kept away from the Ole out train for a long time because he's a genuine legend and one of my favourite players ever. But I can't do it any more. We need someone that knows how to get something out of this squad and grind out wins when things aren't going our way, to make tactical changes that make a difference. The only reason I can think of to keep him is the tiny chance that his relationship with Haaland will steer him our way. It's just not worth it any more.

[Stretty]

Feb 14, 2021 18:11:59 GMT Monty said:

I hate to say it, but I genuinely can't think of a single legitimate reason to keep Ole around. I've kept away from the Ole out train for a long time because he's a genuine legend and one of my favourite players ever. But I can't do it any more. We need someone that knows how to get something out of this squad and grind out wins when things aren't going our way, to make tactical changes that make a difference. The only reason I can think of to keep him is the tiny chance that his relationship with Haaland will steer him our way. It's just not worth it any more.

that is the problem right there.



Ole the player has to be separated from ole the manager.

[Karma]

I’ve seen nothing over the last two years to convince me otherwise that Solskjaer isn’t just a streaky manager

When the pressure is really on we crumble and it’s recycled as progress.

Take Bruno out of that team and we’ll see our true position under this management.

He’s not going to keep him in a job forever though. He deserves more.

[thesheepdog]

The only thing that slightly cheers me up is that there are millions of reds out there that feel as shit as I do. Problem is when Ed and project gimp has finished there will be a lot less

[keanosdog16]

Feb 14, 2021 18:41:01 GMT Karma said:

I’ve seen nothing over the last two years to convince me otherwise that Solskjaer isn’t just a streaky manager

When the pressure is really on we crumble and it’s recycled as progress.

Take Bruno out of that team and we’ll see our true position under this management.

He’s not going to keep him in a job forever though. He deserves more.

Add to that full stadiums with fans baying for blood this lot would definitely not have scored so many away wins

[Rustin Cohle]

Feb 14, 2021 14:37:59 GMT Rustin Cohle said:

So lads, which genius tactical innovation will Ole employ to turn this around? Will it be:

a) Tell the lads at half-time that they need to show more 'passion' without so much as hinting at a tactical tweak?
b) Wait until the 70th minute before making any subs?
c) When he finally does make a sub, make a like for like swap that changes nothing?
d) Late on, sub a defender for an attacker in a move that an eight year old on Football Manager could have done, and sooner?
e) Accept defeat or maybe a draw, say we were unlucky and had decisions go against us after the game, and proceed to carry on with the same centre back pairing in the next game?
f) All of the above?

a) I can't prove it happened but I bet it did.
b) I was five minutes off, close enough for me.
c) Happened. Greenwood was better than Martial but the team was still dire after.
d) Happened more or less - Fred off for VdB, something many of us wanted from the start.
e) Happened.
f) Yup!

[Ole's Red Whiteknight03 Army]

Feb 14, 2021 16:14:11 GMT cantonaisgod said:

Feb 14, 2021 16:01:57 GMT Ole's Red Whiteknight03 Army said:

Didn’t make a difference did it? There’s something very wrong with Rashford at the moment. His head isn’t in it, he’s slow and ponderous with everything he does, can’t do anything first time so he takes 5 touches, doesn’t make the same runs he used to, wants to take on everyone himself and consistently loses the ball, throws his hands up, puts his head down and sulks. Not sure what’s going on, but he’s been awful for a while now.

if you watch when rashford starts on the right for however long it is as soon as he is switched back to the left 9x out of 10 because he has started on the right he is shite for the majority of the game. You start him on the left then Imo he is more involved from the off. I cant think for the life of me why ole shifts him. If anything stick that useless fuck martial on the right he can't do no fucking worse than what he is doing.

That’s the thing with Rashford lately. One bit of adversity and he’s stuck in a moment he can’t get out of.

Personally I’d think any/all of our forwards should be able to play in a fluid attacking front, popping up in spaces the defence isn’t expecting, however they clearly can’t/won’t. There’s no chemistry between them, they don’t play off each other, they don’t make space for each other, they don’t anticipate each other’s runs...it’s like they’re strangers. Too many times today, a ball was played across the 6 yard box and the attackers were statues at the back post. None of them thought the ball was going to come in and they were going to make a run and get on the end of it. They’re all expecting it to be checked back to Fred/CBs and slowly cycled around to the other side, or waiting for some one on the other side to go hero ball. Nothing incisive, nothing creative and nothing requiring effort. At one point Bruno decided to have a lame shot just because he didn’t want to pass to Rashford and have him lose the ball again. Not good enough.

[alwaysUnited]

I am not the one on Ole out train , but he has to take the blame for todays result.
Basically any game he starts with Maguire-Lindelof pairing and we lose by defensive mistake is his fault.

We cant play a high defensive line because these 2 will be exposed in fast counter attacks , we cant sit deep either as lindelof is easily bullied in the air and during set pieces.

[Carbon]

Feb 14, 2021 18:11:59 GMT Monty said:

I hate to say it, but I genuinely can't think of a single legitimate reason to keep Ole around. I've kept away from the Ole out train for a long time because he's a genuine legend and one of my favourite players ever. But I can't do it any more. We need someone that knows how to get something out of this squad and grind out wins when things aren't going our way, to make tactical changes that make a difference. The only reason I can think of to keep him is the tiny chance that his relationship with Haaland will steer him our way. It's just not worth it any more.

Haaland is someone we've not got a sniff of signing

[Rustin Cohle]

[Rustin Cohle]

www.football365.com/news/manchester-united-bruno-fernandes-new-ideas

The Bruno Fernandes Team need some new ideas

SPOILER: Click to show

Really, the only surprise should be that any of us were surprised.

When Mbaye Diagne headed West Brom into a second-minute lead against Manchester United, it just continued a season-long trend of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s team making life unnecessarily difficult for themselves away from home.

Most of the time this season, it hasn’t mattered. Yet turning the 21 points won from losing positions into 22 wasn’t really enough here. It’s a 1-1 draw that represents two more points dropped for United, who have now won just two of their last seven games with points dropped against the bottom two and Arsenal in that run as they become the latest team this season to wilt having hit the front. If Manchester City are going to do the same to get anyone else interested again, it’s going to have to be soon.

But back to today. Harry Maguire and Victor Lindelof’s positioning was suspect even before Diagne – in Gary Neville’s memorable phrase – “mauled Lindelof” to head the ball past David de Gea was typical of United all season. The response was typical of United in the last few weeks. It really wasn’t great. Giving it to Bruno has worked very well but he’s looking very tired indeed now and United need something else.

So good is Fernandes that even when as anonymous and exhausted as he was today, he still gets his goal and still gets United a point. It could have been even worse. The technique for his equaliser was great, even if it ultimately became the second-best shinner Manchester United have scored in Premier League history.

It was also no surprise – and in its own way damning – that it came from a Maguire foray down the left. For most of the first half and pretty often in the second, Maguire looked United’s best attacking outlet with those oddly disconcerting yet weirdly effective forward runs down the left that all England fans will recognise with great fondness from the last World Cup.

He initially won United a penalty in the second half before it was overturned on VAR. That in itself was a bit of a weird one, with the foul a marginal call but the fact Maguire was offside clear cut without drawing any lines, partly due to nature’s offside line – the penalty area – helping us out. Yet VAR appeared to overlook the clear offside altogether to focus instead on the much more dubious business of overturning Craig Pawson’s on-field decision. It would have been a soft one, and Maguire undoubtedly made the most of it, yet there was contact on both shoulder and leg from the defender. Clear and obvious? Still, we got the right result in the end, even though giving the penalty having ignored the offside would’ve provided us at least two days’ worth of easy Penandes Mailbox content.

United, though, did not get the right result, and it could easily have been worse. United, having sleepwalked through the first 35 minutes of the game with not even the Baggies’ early opener rousing them from their slumbers, were better in the second half.

But it would be wrong to pitch this as one-way traffic and West Brom hanging on. They did a huge amount of defending, for sure, but Sam Johnstone was required to make only two significant second-half saves. The first with his feet to deny Mason Greenwood, still short of confidence, and the second in the game’s last action as Maguire, very much the game’s central figure for good and ill, saw his top-corner-bound header clawed on to the post.

West Brom, though, could just as easily have won it. Diagne muscled Maguire off the ball as easily as he had dealt with Lindelof in the first half before seeing a shot saved by De Gea. VAR may well have ruled that one out, but it would not have intervened had he steered a late chance under the crossbar rather than over it.

It is unlikely that this point or the encouragement and promise of Diagne’s first start will prove enough to save West Brom, but this was hugely encouraging nevertheless. The bleak passivity of last week’s defeat at Spurs – a team who absolutely do not merit that kind of cap-doffing respect right now – was gone. For all United were nominally on the front foot for the most part, neither Maguire nor Lindelof will look back on this as one of their easier afternoons of Premier League action.

The challenge for West Brom now is to turn this sort of hard-working, total-commitment point against the elite into something more tangible against the rest.

Because it doesn’t actually take 20:20 hindsight to have seen this result coming even in a game that pitted the worst home record in the division against the best on the road. West Brom have already taken points off Man City and Liverpool, United had already started coming up short when giving inferior opposition a goal headstart.

While United must try and salvage the wreckage of their title challenge in a run that includes three of the top six in their next four, West Brom need to stop taking the odd draw off good sides and start beating other ones; Burnley, Brighton, Newcastle and Palace are their next four.

Both teams may find their goals out of reach at the end of that lot. And we shouldn’t be surprised.

[Stretty]

Feb 14, 2021 20:34:58 GMT Rustin Cohle said:

thats something you say when playing one of the top clubs not West Brom 

[dazjoe]

Obviously, boringly, depressingly predictable.

Back to the default position of expecting a draw or defeat in every single game now. 1 point from West Brom and Sheff Utd, two of the worse teams in Premiership history.

But Ole's at the wheel.

Past caring really. The future is shit come what may. We need quality players, like Sancho, Haaland, etc, but the only hope in hell we have of that is if we have Champions League football. We also need Ole gone, but the only hope in hell we have of that is if he fails to get Champions League football.

So the options are 1 - Finish top 4 and keep Ole and maybe sign a couple of quality players, but not win anything because we have the complete wrong man in charge of the team.
Or 2 - Sack Ole after missing out on Champions League football and miss out on signing the top quality we need because we don't have Champions League football to offer them.

Rinse and repeat.