Manchester United 3:1 Crystal Palace (Tue 19th July, 11:10 UK time)

We sure need to improve on defending set pieces. This can become one of our biggest weaknesses.
Malacia look poor defensively. He gave some easy balls away and he was fooled too easily sometimes. I was a little worried about seeing his level.
 
Sure. Frenkie advances play through his dribbling rather than his passing.

He can make them. He just won't 9/10, and, when he does, the weight of his pass is inconsistent. Between the lines passes he's fine, and the odd scoop ball, but long range passing has never been a big strength of his.

In fact, like Arthur, it's why they came under so much criticism at Barca. Too safe with their passing.

Maguire is the same style as them, too.
Maguire has tunnel vision. How many times do we see Maguire dribble in circle and create trouble for himself from nothing when all he should have done is simple pass. There is no comparison between Maguire to anyone else. Players like FdJ takes his touch with purpose.

Arthur is lazy athlete and a possession recycling machine but without other purposes. Even gives the pass to wrong option because he just recycle possession for the sake of it. Not progress the ball up the pitch at all.

You're just using different player to describe another player, and it's way off the mark. FdJ does both defensive work either tracking back, or press, throwing tackle. He takes the ball from the defenders/goalkeepers, so work to get the ball up the pitch. FdJ at time break away bring the ball higher up the pitch for Barcelona, only to find himself with no, or only one obvious passing option. Barcelona is not used to have quick direct transition. There is a reason Barcelona in recent years post Messi is getting direct CF like Depay and Aubameyang. Barcelona wide forwards don't hold the width as strictly as they're required to be Pep. Switching play in this Barcelona would mean side way to a fullbacks parallel to you. What's the point? The issue between Arthur and FdJ is very different.

If you're comparing to the best in the business like Pirlo, Scholes, Xabi Alonso, Carrick, then even Iniesta, Modric, Kroos, Verratti... switch play long balls look tad inconsistent in term of weight. Then you can apply "limited", "weakness" to anything. Yet Maguire is ready to be brought into conversation of play makers by you (being comfortable on ball is not play maker). Really?
 
Friendly reminder to manage your expectations. It's only preseason. Remember LvG? Yeah.

Obviously ETH could flop massively but there’s no point comparing him to anyone at this stage. LvG had a track record for dull possession football (at times) and terrible man management which both proved to contribute to his downfall.

There’s no point comparing at this point and may as well just enjoy the ride.
 
No it wasn't. We struggled to score primarily against the better teams, we did better against lower half teams than any other team than City, and we scored a significant majority of our goals from established play. This nonsense about counterattack football under Ole has got to stop.
So we dominated teams did we? We could hardly keep the ball under ole, couldn’t string 2 passes together.
 
I still don't feel like Rashford and Bruno are quite there. Sancho has been excellent, Martial took his chances and has been decent. We desperately need another attacker though. It is only so long until one of these hits a slump and we're totally screwed. Elanga looks the worst player so far on tour.
Similar thought.

Rashford and Bruno still have those erratic moments choosing the harder unpredictable passes/tricks instead of a cynical straight forward systematic move.

Elanga is the worst of potential first teamer. However, there are worse showings from other players in this tour. Telles really stands out for the worse. Amad is a huge disappointment.
 
Friendly reminder to manage your expectations. It's only preseason. Remember LvG? Yeah.


Winning 3 preseason games is better than losing 3 preseason games

I dont think anyone is seriously going overboard, but why not enjoy whats in front of us right now
 
We sure need to improve on defending set pieces. This can become one of our biggest weaknesses.
Malacia look poor defensively. He gave some easy balls away and he was fooled too easily sometimes. I was a little worried about seeing his level.

It is his first time in a new tactical and fitness regime and playing for a big club like Manchester United. He probably needs some time to adapt and what better way to do it besides pre-season.
 
Perhaps Duxbury and phill , I never rated Lingard much either but fair enough if you consider each of them superior to mctom.
But that's not my point because as I said before most of those had the luxury of playing under Fergie, lets give Scott a season (or even half a season) under a proper manager before throwing him under the buss.

He's been playing regularly for five years, and the list of United players through history with as many games is not long. I think we have a reasonably large sample size to rate him. Pereira didn't get a chance, Lingard is out. James sold, while Bailly and AWB are out in the cold. Williams is not getting a try. None of these played under SAF, yet we don't think they're good enough.

If he improves then that's great, of course, but he is not very good at things United midfielders have usually been good at, and he has not been a good player so far in his career. He wasn't very good in the academy either.

True, but the claim was he is the worst academy player.

Which is just simply not true.

The claim was that he's the worst academy player who's been given as much time, I'm pretty sure.
 
Friendly reminder to manage your expectations. It's only preseason. Remember LvG? Yeah.

It's not about the results.

The performances are just so much better than last season.

Look at the Palace game at the end of last season compared to the last 3 games.

We looked clueless and there seemed to be no tactical plan but the players really look like they know what they're meant to be doing now.
 
So we dominated teams did we? We could hardly keep the ball under ole, couldn’t string 2 passes together.

If we couldnt string 2 passes together, our possession stats will always be 20% and below. That was never the case with Ole. Anyway his tenure is over so there is no need to always bring him in to drive the argument.
 
A lot of difficult decisions to make. We'll need to give Ten Hag a bit of time to mullet over.
Yeah, I just hope when EtH inevitably and understandably leaves out Ronaldo for the first game it doesn't start a roe between them.
 
Friendly reminder to manage your expectations. It's only preseason. Remember LvG? Yeah.
Not a single person on here really believes we will be anything but fighting for top 4 at best next season …but anyone that can’t see how the whole mood and attitude of the team has changed is blind. And that is something to be positive about…finally.
 
He's been playing regularly for five years, and the list of United players through history with as many games is not long. I think we have a reasonably large sample size to rate him. Pereira didn't get a chance, Lingard is out. James sold, while Bailly and AWB are out in the cold. Williams is not getting a try. None of these played under SAF, yet we don't think they're good enough.

If he improves then that's great, of course, but he is not very good at things United midfielders have usually been good at, and he has not been a good player so far in his career. He wasn't very good in the academy either.



The claim was that he's the worst academy player who's been given as much time, I'm pretty sure.
Even then it's still not true :lol:

But people have their scapegoats just as people have their favourites. Just seems like some players will never get the plaudits because of who they are.

McTominay is a very effective player, I would say a better player than P.Neville, and John o Shea at their respective times of their careers, who both suffered from not being able to nail a set position down.
 
It is his first time in a new tactical and fitness regime and playing for a big club like Manchester United. He probably needs some time to adapt and what better way to do it besides pre-season.
he actually doesnt look very quick. Im not saying he wont improve his speed, nor is Shaw that quick neither, but never having seen him play, I was led to believe he is lightning quick. Sorry, he aint. Still early days.
 
It's not about the results.

The performances are just so much better than last season.

Look at the Palace game at the end of last season compared to the last 3 games.

We looked clueless and there seemed to be no tactical plan but the players really look like they know what they're meant to be doing now.

Stop being logical!

You just have to keep repeating "yeah, but remember LvG's first pre-season".
 
If we couldnt string 2 passes together, our possession stats will always be 20% and below. That was never the case with Ole. Anyway his tenure is over so there is no need to always bring him in to drive the argument.
People are still going to discuss what went wrong with previous managers when comparing our new manager. People still talk about the fergie days man!
 
Fish puns after weeks of height puns. FFS, how low have our standards sunk to.
 
Even then it's still not true :lol:

But people have their scapegoats just as people have their favourites. Just seems like some players will never get the plaudits because of who they are.

McTominay is a very effective player, I would say a better player than P.Neville, and John o Shea at their respective times of their careers, who both suffered from not being able to nail a set position down.

And I think you rating O'Shea below McTominay is pretty absurd, and something I wouldn't have guessed anyone would do. Does that mean you're scapegoating him? I don't think so, when you have a list of players someone has to be the worst.

United have been poor for years, midfield has been United's clearly worst area on the pitch, and McTominay has been a mainstay in that weak midfield. Meanwhile, O'Shea had a hard time becoming a starter because he was competing with some of the best players in the world rather than an aging over the hill Matic. He can't even play as a goalkeeper.
 
We did struggle against park the bus teams though as ole was all about counter attack. When teams sit deep you need a full back that’s comfortable on the ball and decent at crossing to give us another option and dalot is better then bissaka at that.

We only really struggled the season when Pogba was ruled out early on and we relied on Pereira/Lingard/Mata to create. I haven't got the stats to hand, but I don't think we had too many games where we didn't score. I always thought that criticism was a little unfounded. The big issue with Oleball was our lack of midfield and how easy it was to force our defense into a mistake.
 
Sure. Frenkie advances play through his dribbling rather than his passing.

He can make them. He just won't 9/10, and, when he does, the weight of his pass is inconsistent. Between the lines passes he's fine, and the odd scoop ball, but long range passing has never been a big strength of his.

In fact, like Arthur, it's why they came under so much criticism at Barca. Too safe with their passing.

Maguire is the same style as them, too.
This is spot on re: FDJ. He really isn't the player fans think he is, like a pirlo or scholes or something. He is a brilliant ball carrier from deep. So different to eriksen in how he affects a game. I hope people aren't disappointed if they believe we are trying to buy a different player
 
Will Fish tackles like Paul Shoals.
Hope it's not already been done.