Will be a fun tour! we playing vs good team even though it won't decide how the season will turn out. do they have a open training schedule for the whole tour? driving down to the game in Columbia vs Liverpool. Will be exciting to see them close in training.
MU Tour 2024 - Back to the US
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) and Jamie (@Vault Dweller) get the depressing job of reviewing United's 3-0 loss at Old Trafford to Liverpool. They discuss what went wrong, Casemiro's day to forget, and the pressure now on Erik Ten Hag. They also take some time to give McTominay a proper farewell, and give their overall thoughts on the Summer Transfer Window.
These visits over here have become boring with the frequency of games, the same opponents, high ticket costs to watch the arse end of our squad play the arse end of another premier league club.
Good enough for fans who wouldn't easily get to see United.
Good enough for fans who wouldn't easily get to see United.
Many blamed the U.S tour for our ill prepared preseason last year. And guess what? We are going to the same place again. With many players coming in late, it is very concerning.
Personally, I much prefer it when we play friendlies against non-PL clubs.
I've grown to dislike most of the other top PL teams to various degrees, and have 9 months of seeing us play regularly against them every season. I prefer the friendlies to be against teams we don't play all that often.
But then Arsenal also went on a US Tour at the same time - including playing us again - and then competed in the title race right up to the end of the season. So it obviously didn't hinder them in the PL and doubt it had much to do with our struggles.
Apparently the only official open session is Friday and is sold out. The open training tickets were raffled off. All training at UCLA.
There is a meet and greet with whole team at Futbol Society (8500 Sunset) at 5 tonight. Only first 50 fans guaranteed photo and meet. There is also a pregame event at COSM with MULA and then a march to SoFi at 3:45.
What is obvious? It is obvious that Arsenal are better than us? Well, I never.
Yep, I think that is the obvious thing. You've stumbled over the right answer with your sarcasm. So it's not about a tour abroad - which pretty much every team does nowadays, especially the top ones - being the reason for our poor season. As those tours don't effect the upcoming seasons of the better teams. So it's the state of the club - their squad, manager, etc - that decides the success of the season. Not where they spend pre-season.
I think I remember SAF saying it was a good place for pre season. World class facilities, challenging heat and humidity to help conditioning and not a massive culture shock for the squad. We've had some great games over here too especially LVG's 1st against an MLS Allstars. A smart location especially after a summer international.
A European tour would be very fecking cool though.
I’m not sure you understood my initial point. This tour crosses multiple time zones, disrupting our proper preparation especially with player fitness level since they can't properly train. Given that our team has been underperforming and there are concerns about the tactics needing improvement, our priority should be on proper preparation for the next season. This way, we won't have any excuses if the next season is as disappointing as the last. We need to eliminate any potential factors contributing to our poor performance for the time being. These tours are just for advertising purpose and don't help the team much and everyone knows it.
Arsenal has been playing better than us and they are afford to do things that we can't, at least, not yet.
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They've shortened the amount of travel down a lot this time.
Also, didn't Arsenal go to the USA last year and finish only a few points behind City? Aren't they out there again this summer? Are you concerned about their players?
You're worrying over the wrong things.
Read the above post.
They are staying in California for 2/3 games. I would imagine they’ll have one flight across time zones for final game in South Carolina and leave the next day for Manchester. Not a whole lot of travel like last season where they had squads in multiple cities at the same time and playing in New York, Houston, Las Vegas, and San Diego. I agree last year didn’t seem well planned or thought out in terms of travel.
It would definitely be nice to go somewhere else in future years.
I'm not against touring, but you'd think they would reconsider flying far, especially after last season. At least then, the excuse was that we didn't have proper pre-season training or preparation, and I'm sure that was one of the factors. We can't use that excuse again to write off another season if the root cause is something else, like the manager. For the club's sake, give him and the squad the best possible chance to prove themselves this season.
Thanks. Too bad it’s sold out as the practice sessions are far better in terms of access to players and staff.
MUGA squadThere should be a nice MULA turn out.
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Yeah I get your point about playing teams we don't usually compete against!! Madrid, Juve or Bayern would have been great! I've been to the Arsenal game last year the atmosphere was nice with rival fans and it's a friendly so no bad feelings at the end.
Not having a 1am-3am kick-off time would he nice.
Think it was pretty clear that last year's tour had too much travel between games and this year they have planned better?
Yeah I don't remember the argument last year being that United when to America. It was more so how much traveling and the amount of matches in a short time frame that didn't allow United to properly prepare for the season. We had 2 squads in 2 different spots (San Diego and Texas?), and then the Texas squad flew back to San Diego. I could be misremembering, but that's what the argument was.
I ended up attending the open training session at UCLA. Good to see them fairly up close, and to see so many new & youth players, like Yoro, Fish, Mather, Collyer, Amass, Oyedele, Vitek, Bennett, Murray, Hannibal, Fletcher.
Many people have questioned how/why McTominay is still in the team, and after an exhaustive sample size of one practice, I can safely say it's because he's practically the best player in training. They split the 28 players into 4 groups of 7, and then had small pitch scrimmage followed by a wider pitch scrimmage. In both, McT was dominant. He scored probably 8 goals and hit the upright twice.
Most players were the same in practice as in games: Antony couldn't lose his marker, missed shots, but tried one with his right foot (saved). Rashford skinned his markers several times and his shot was fiercest. Casemiro misplaced a dozen passes and did those yellow card lunge tackles 4 or 5 times. Sancho had some nice footwork, he's good with the ball in tight spaces. A woman sat in front of me kept shouting, "Sancho, we love you!" Ugh. AWB can get forward but has no idea what to do with the ball once he's there. Rasmus is a big unit. I guess I didn't fully appreciate how large frame he has, but he's a beefy lad, put himself about and gave that proverbial 110% where it looked like he was going to injure himself.
Some new boys looked as good as any of the regular first team. Amass was probably the best defender and has a wicked shot on him.
Oh yeah, forgot: Onana. He saved one shot. It was about shoulder height and he had to dive to get it. Everything else - and I mean everything else - ended up in the back of the net. Any shot on the ground he was rooted like a statue. Strangely enough, Vitek made a lot of good saves, you'd think their roles were reversed.
At the end of each set of "games" they had the winning 7 pose for a "team" photo, which is cool because they are bringing back that always-be-winning/win-everything mentality.
Anyway, I'll put some photos here if anyone cares: https://postimg.cc/gallery/7kWVbqF
Many people have questioned how/why McTominay is still in the team, and after an exhaustive sample size of one practice, I can safely say it's because he's practically the best player in training. They split the 28 players into 4 groups of 7, and then had small pitch scrimmage followed by a wider pitch scrimmage. In both, McT was dominant. He scored probably 8 goals and hit the upright twice.
Most players were the same in practice as in games: Antony couldn't lose his marker, missed shots, but tried one with his right foot (saved). Rashford skinned his markers several times and his shot was fiercest. Casemiro misplaced a dozen passes and did those yellow card lunge tackles 4 or 5 times. Sancho had some nice footwork, he's good with the ball in tight spaces. A woman sat in front of me kept shouting, "Sancho, we love you!" Ugh. AWB can get forward but has no idea what to do with the ball once he's there. Rasmus is a big unit. I guess I didn't fully appreciate how large frame he has, but he's a beefy lad, put himself about and gave that proverbial 110% where it looked like he was going to injure himself.
Some new boys looked as good as any of the regular first team. Amass was probably the best defender and has a wicked shot on him.
Oh yeah, forgot: Onana. He saved one shot. It was about shoulder height and he had to dive to get it. Everything else - and I mean everything else - ended up in the back of the net. Any shot on the ground he was rooted like a statue. Strangely enough, Vitek made a lot of good saves, you'd think their roles were reversed.
At the end of each set of "games" they had the winning 7 pose for a "team" photo, which is cool because they are bringing back that always-be-winning/win-everything mentality.
Anyway, I'll put some photos here if anyone cares: https://postimg.cc/gallery/7kWVbqF
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For a moment I thought golf cart driver was Evra.
So I wasn’t the only one who briefly thought that.
I had to pause and rewind, to find it wasn’t.
Nice update. My experience is that it's quite hard saving shots in training because they get so close to the goal.
I’m sure that’s part of it but Vitek made 10 saves to Onana’s 1.
Tbh I think Vitek is close (and probably will be) a better shot-stopper than Onana in the future.
Nice one.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cz9d2z3qg8lo
So we're top of the pointless preseason air miles table! We need to cut back on these bullshit fixtures. There's no excuse to be doing 13,000 air miles in preseason. It's also interesting to note that other clubs help their local lower league sides by organising a friendly as well. One less shitty US game and a game against Altrincham would only be a good thing.
So we're top of the pointless preseason air miles table! We need to cut back on these bullshit fixtures. There's no excuse to be doing 13,000 air miles in preseason. It's also interesting to note that other clubs help their local lower league sides by organising a friendly as well. One less shitty US game and a game against Altrincham would only be a good thing.
The stands the fans were in are shown briefly behind them in this video. At the time this video was shot, the practice had been over for about 20 minutes. In case anyone was wondering, yes, there were a lot of English fans in the stands, but probably 80-90% were speaking English with an American accent, the way the Lord intended.
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Who isn't there yet aside from Zirkzee, Dalot, Bruno, Martinez, Pellstri, Shaw and Mainoo? Malacia is still in rehab.
reading that article, Newcastle and Spurs are on 30,000 miles.
Who do we think is the closest to making the first team out of these young players then?
Nice report!
On the keepers, it's funny you mention that because there was an article recently about first team goalies never putting any effort in during training, and how that leads to clubs stockpiling them.
Thanks. I imagine seeing Onana not save anything gives encouragement to all the understudies.
Maguire, Yoro, Lindelöf were there but didn't train, so they were sort of there and sort of not there.
Collyer, Wheatley in the first tier. They look ready and should be integrated into the first team.
Amass, Oyedele, Fletcher, Ennis in the next. Age and size holding them back.
Fish, Mather, Murray, Bennett in the tier after that or perhaps not at all. They are young and/or not showing much.
Not sure where to put Hannibal. Based on my one hour of watching him train, he has no impact in training.
I love our youth team and think I can get them into the first team through my mental powers, I always over rate them.
Amass and Oyedele are really good but look like boys playing against men. Amass, despite being young and relatively small (5'9"), did really well in that training session. Antony is small (bullshit is he 5'9") and useless, though, and he's in the first team.