Manchester United 2014/2015 Premier League Season (+ CC & FA Cup)

I don't want van Gaal sacked or anything, but bottom line is he's spent £150 mil and results are not good enough, simply doing better than Moyes (performance wise) is not good enough. Things need to change and improve, because results wise he's doing worse than Moyes. Again I don't want him sacked, but I don't think we should paint it as something it isn't, it's been a horrible start to the season.

I think as RED mentioned correctly for that sending off valencia is equally responsible. He was put there on that right side for a goddamn purpose. Yes he improved in the 2nd half under dire circumstances but then again how can he play like a winger that too when there is none to back him up and that too again when you are going to come up against someone like an Aguero. The primary concern should have been to stay back rather than to carelessly waltz forward like a headless chicken.
And I agree smalling is one humongous moron.  His biggest fault IMO was that 1st yellow card he unnecessarily picked up by trying to do some fancy stuff with hart not this tackle. But then again being on a yellow card already it was a crime

whats over is over and I am optimistic and also I am pretty serious when I say put smalling, evans on the bench and start blackett and mcnair. Yes carrick's also an option and can play infinitely better than those 2 it looks right now, but I think we still need him in midfield.

Busby Babe wrote:I don't want van Gaal sacked or anything, but bottom line is he's spent £150 mil and results are not good enough, simply doing better than Moyes (performance wise) is not good enough. Things need to change and improve, because results wise he's doing worse than Moyes. Again I don't want him sacked, but I don't think we should paint it as something it isn't, it's been a horrible start to the season.

Let's at this point look at it in a different way. That point table is way misleading.

Leave the first 3 games out. We only collected 2 points there where we could have actually collected full 9. But thats an excuse IMO LvG deserve. Squad was still hit and down thanks to the bleep of a last season.

So Its actually Last 7 games
3 wins, 2 draws and 2 losses.
losses against city and leicester. And we pretty much know why we lost those games.
2 draws - chelsea, west brom. Only the 2 points dropped against Brom we can may be blame the team (and him). And that point we won against chelsea, we wouldnt have if it was moyish and if it was this in-form chelsea. Hence only 1 point we actually dropped. = LvG's fault. We will make it up in the 2nd half of the season.

I think you guys were a little too harsh on Rafael earlier on, this is our injuries this season. He's been injured as much as non-injury prone Herrera. If he was the only one getting injured, or more frequently injured than the non-injury prone players fair enough. This suggests it's training rather than being his fault.

Lumiere_Blanche wrote:

Busby Babe wrote:I don't want van Gaal sacked or anything, but bottom line is he's spent £150 mil and results are not good enough, simply doing better than Moyes (performance wise) is not good enough. Things need to change and improve, because results wise he's doing worse than Moyes. Again I don't want him sacked, but I don't think we should paint it as something it isn't, it's been a horrible start to the season.

Let's at this point look at it in a different way. That point table is way misleading.

Leave the first 3 games out. We only collected 2 points there where we could have actually collected full 9. But thats an excuse IMO LvG deserve. Squad was still hit and down thanks to the bleep of a last season.

So Its actually Last 7 games
3 wins, 2 draws and 2 losses.
losses against city and leicester. And we pretty much know why we lost those games.
2 draws - chelsea, west brom. Only the 2 points dropped against Brom we can may be blame the team  (and him). And that point we won against chelsea, we wouldnt have if it was moyish and if it was this in-form chelsea. Hence only 1 point we actually dropped. = LvG's fault. We will make it up in the 2nd half of the season.

I agree, I do think we're improving.

Busby Babe wrote:I think you guys were a little too harsh on Rafael earlier on, this is our injuries this season. He's been injured as much as non-injury prone Herrera. If he was the only one getting injured, or more frequently injured than the non-injury prone players fair enough. This suggests it's training rather than being his fault.

yea the fault lies clearly with the system. Right a little harsh I guess.
Injury prone and non injury prone players getting injured at the same rate is kinda shocking. Some curse is surely looming over Carrington.

And that table. thats pretty scary man. Just look at that. We are 2 and something months into the season and just look at the length of that list. Unreal!!!

my pick for tomorrow.


while starting the game


and after banging in a couple of early goals revert it to 4-2-3-1 with wilson at the tip and rooney behind.

no need to play fellaini tomorrow. That will be giving out the wrong signals. We need creativity and dynamism. We need to play beautiful football and take the game to these sort of teams. Fellaini can return to the 11 against ars next week in place of Januzaj.

Carrick at CB, otherwise I agree. Hope we do got back to a diamond for this game.

“I have to decide which striker. It is not his (Falcao’s) fault. With the other system I could play with two strikers but then the balance wasn’t good. We had difficulties in the last half an hour,” the United manager said.

“That is why I have remodelled the structure. The balance of the team is the problem. That is why I have remodelled the structure of my team for the third time.

“Since then we have less goals in our favour but also less goals conceded and we have played against the better teams in the Premier League (Chelsea and City) in that time on an equal level more or less.”

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/man-utd-reshuffle-top-makes-8071822

It's hard to say now but if we are to stick with the 4-3-3, then it makes it tough to keep Falcao as it wastes Di Maria on the wing because Rooney is in midfield. When we could use Rooney as a CF, Di Maria CM and use the Falcao money to buy a winger.

Of course by the end of the season Falcao might be in insane form, where we'd be idiots not to buy him. It's just weird that we can't fit our most expensive signing and current best player into his best position with Falcao in the team if we're using a 4-3-3.

I'm not saying we shouldn't buy Falcao btw, things could look different at the end of the season. He might be the guy that becomes our best player. Just the problem of fitting everyone in a 4-3-3 is harder than the diamond.

Seems to me LVG is learning more and more about the problems in this team and is desperately trying to find ways to negate our weaknesses, but at the same time some of these decisions have negative affects on some players.

For instance, now we're playing a more compact midfield to bolster our defensive woes,(looks to me that LVG may abandon the diamond and in turn play a 4-3-3) but in turn we're having to place our best player out wide, where he is struggling to make an impact. Then we're playing Rooney as a midfielder just to fit him in the line-up, we have Januzaj on the wings where he has not really impressed in the 3 games he featured this season apart from briefly v Chelsea.

Then we're left with a player in decline as our lone striker, who seems to be immune from being dropped. And we have Falcao being mysteriously injured, we do not know the length of time he will be out or how severe the injury is. It's just a weird situation.

For all the positives I have seen, there are things that are raising questions.

LVG did atleast be honest in that statement when he said we may concede less with the 4-3-3, but we may also score less too. Catch 22 type of scenario. I wouldn't be against having Wilson replace RVP till Falcao gets back if LVG is adamant in having Rooney in a MF role, or Rooney up front and have Fellaini/Carrick in his place once our defensive injury crisis eases.

Ugh...it was always going to be a huge work in progress that will take "3 years" to get right, as he put it. Just want us to go on a run of wins now, starting tomorrow. we badly need it.

btw the diamond is my preferred system for us to play. We play some lovely stuff using that formation.

cant rooney play in the wing ? He has stated this season I think he has no problem to play wide if lvg want him to. That will allow us to play d maria in cm, herrera in am wilson/rvp as the lone striker until falcao returns and januzaj as rw.

fellaini/blind-herrera-di maria
adnan-wilson/rvp-rooney

Rooney is not that good on the wing he's better centrally

He said the problem with the diamond is we were able to play well for only 60 mins, but with the 4-3-3 it's not that diffreent. Against Chelsea we were only really good in the first half and against Man City in the final 20 mins. Against West Brom we kept the intensity up for 90 mins but we were chasing the game and West Brom were sat back. The games where it troubled us like Everton and West Ham we were winning and they were attacking us.

I know we've scored less than in the diamond, but we've only had Rooney back once using the 4-3-3 and Falcao hasn't played in it yet. Also, the teams we've faced are tougher than using the diamond.

United XI: De Gea, Valencia, McNair, Blind, Shaw, Fellaini, Carrick, Januzaj, Rooney, Di Maria, van Persie

Subs: Lindegaard, Vermijl, Blackett, Fletcher, Herrera, Mata, Wilson.

Herrera on the bench, again.

So what was that buzz about wilson starting today. media bs now we can call it I reckon. Again van persie

Herrera will have to prove once again it seems. Fellaini is performing and since it was evident from the presser its going to be a 4-3-3 herrera found his bum on the bench. Hopefully he will make an appearance in the match as a sub. We do need him against ars.
Januzaj selection too automatic as we dont have another right winger. Big game for the boy this. Has to step up. Has to show glimpses of his quality. Show us the Adnan of last season please.

And Blind. Is he going to play in the defense and carrick in midfield ?

Blind is at CB.

Why we would use the same exact midfield as last season I have know idea. It was devoid of any creativity. Herrera is fit too, van Gaal said it himself.

if blind is playing in defense. then its a decision by van gaal. I thought he was put there just for namesake and would actually play in the midfield. Herrera is better than carrick in every sense. A fit herrera can dance back to reclaim a lost ball. Will show desire and dynamism and creativity. Strange very very this is.

carrick returning to the 11 and look at the shit we are serving. Absolutely horrendous stuff this is. I can see them scoring a goal on the counter and we going to panic mode and conceding even more. What a disgrace of a football match. Its effing crystal palace folks.

Look like a Moyes team, no surprise since we're playing the same shitty midfield and depend too much on the wings. Herrera should have started over Fellaini. We can't create.

0-0 HT

Utterly dreadful performance

Pass, pass knock it out wide, too many touches. We're not penetrating their defence at all. Never look like scoring apart from that Shaw shot.

Dreadful! Feel like i'm watching us from last season.

Di Maria is wasted out wide. Completely innefective.

Januzaj is a complete waste of space. Atrocious showing from.

Mcnair and Blind presented CP with the best chance of the game. And there lies our biggest threat- ourselves. Despite dominating, CP have had the best chance of the match, presented to them by our CBs.

These lot are finding it too easy to defend. We should just abandon the 4-3-3, play the diamond and go all out to score, because as of now, we don't look like scoring at all.

These lot are there for the taking ffs

Can't even blame van Persie today, he's had nothing.

LVG better pray we win this match otherwise the knives will be well and truly out. Awful performance.

Take Fellaini off, get Hererra on, move ADM back centrally and play the diamond.

CP's intention is to defend today, parking the bus. We won't score playing the way we are now.

Also Jnauzaj wtf has happened to him.

januzaj should be sent back to the reserve side. This is getting irritating now. He is given 4 starts in a row and he is playing as if he dont give a damn and dont want to fight for that spot. If theres no fire well dispatch him to the 2nd squad until it comes back.
EVERYBODY SUCKED. It will be a waste of time so to mention everybody individually. Its like the players dont want to win. Seems like Moyes's ghost is looming over Old trafford.

I was so pissed off that stopped watching after 30 mins and thought i would come back after the halftime and was pretty sure I wont miss anything in those 15 mins.

Bring on Herrera, wilson in place of Adnan and RvP and ffs show some desire and urgency. Wilson inplace of vp will give us pace upfront. Rvp didnt suck more than the rest but still it has to be done to win this game.

It's just a patch of bad form for Januzaj, he hadn't started for ages. Playing for the reserves is not the same intensity. The problem is there is also no alternative to him, well good alternative.