That's interesting. So you saw no problem with our tempo for most of the match? Rooney was just having a mediocre game. He dropped incredibly deep because that's how slow we were playing. In essence, he separated himself from the rest of the attack and we were left with RVP isolated up front and our wingers hugging the touchline.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. We played it to the wings incessantly when our wingers weren't producing much. Until Villa's second goal, we didn't even attempt to look towards playing through the middle. It was just too slow and I'm not sure how anyone can absolve our midfield 2 from that. Our wingers had a part to play with the static movement from the front 4 but then again, we're looking to implement a system away from home which works best at home! We made it easy for Villa to suss out any attacks we had. We never really broke Villa down until Paul's assist for the first goal. We just played it wide in hopes that our wingers could break them down. It was predictable and left our attack mostly isolated and disjointed.
We talk about the importance of our midfielders being able to dictate the tempo of the match, but then when we get down to it, we just settle on "oh the wingers are to blame because they're off form" blah blah blah. With the capabilities in this team and let alone the qualities Carrick and Scholes have, we at least could have changed tact with the amount of possession we had. We needed to up the tempo. But no. We just did the same thing over and over again when it was clear it just wasn't going to work. Why should we settle on being so one-dimensional?
It's fine criticizing our wingers for being poor but our CMs were just as culpable. They were playing too deep and our gamble that our wingers would produce fell flat. It played right into Villa's hands as they knew as long as they remained compact, we wouldn't threaten much. Putting Ireland on Scholes made us even less effective. IMO, we shouldn't have to rely on them so much but we did and we almost paid the price for it.
But the thing is the argument is that we kept playing it out to the wingers who did nothing, how is that the midfielders fault? Say at Chelsea, Mata and Hazard are having an off game, you don't go and blame Mikel and Ramirez for that, their job is to make sure those guys get the ball in good areas, they can't be held accountable for them not using it well. And it's not like it's a one off game where the attack was just having an off day, we've seen this slow, urgency lacking attack many times now, whether Scholes plays or not.
Like I said there was a marked difference between how the front four played in the second half compared to the first. Firstly there was definitely more movement from them, if the attackers stay fixed in their positions, then the midfielders have limited options which is what they had in the first half, did Rooney offer the movement that RVP did in the second half? Not in my opinion, and RVP was willing to get on the ball and come inside with it, Rooney in the first half rarely turned to face Villa's goal with the ball at his feet, he either played it back/sideways or spread it wide. Again to compare to Chelsea if you want central penetration you look at Oscar, what's he doing? Same with Rooney if he's playing in that deeper role.
When Rooney did move to the left over Young he offered a bigger threat as he linked up better, again that option wasn't there in the first half.
If we struggled for possession or couldn't get it to our attacking players in the final third then I'd say offensively the midfielders caused problems but that wasn't the case. Certainly because of their depth they were more restricted in the way they could get involved but it wasn't like Young and Valencia were having to constantly track back and get the ball deep, they got it high up the pitch. Defensively Rooney came deep, but when we had the ball he saw it plenty of times relatively high up the pitch.
Again like I said we had, according to some, roughly 70% of the ball, we definitely weren't just passing it on the half way line and the 3 main creators, Valencia, Rooney and Young got the ball where they'd want it, defensive issues aside, the offensive issues were with those guys not doing anything with it and not trying to change it when it wasn't working.
) would be injury free I don't think that if Scholes will retire in this moment would lose us the title, but I think that he can play some games and we are in a more comfortable season with him. And while he will probably delay the development of Ando and Cleverley by taking their place, I think that both of them (especially Cleverley) can learn a lot from him. Also I think that his presence in the dressing room is a good thing.