Positivity after City

[jem]

The positivity I cling on to is that unlike under Ole, I fully expect ETH to take stock of what happened and change accordingly. I don't think he'll persist much longer with McTominay as a starter nor Rashford as a #9 (especially if Martial is available again.)

 

[NewUser777]

The positivity I cling on to is that unlike under Ole, I fully expect ETH to take stock of what happened and change accordingly. I don't think he'll persist much longer with McTominay as a starter nor Rashford as a #9 (especially if Martial is available again.)

Didn’t we beat Man City several times under Ole? Somehow, Ole was deluded. And ETH is pragmatic. Troubles are still the same for our team, and it goes way back before Ole or ETH.

 

[AlPistacho]

I agree with you. It's early days for ETH, and we must give him a chance.

The beauty of ETH is that after Brighton and Brentford he learnt and improved us. The main hope from this is that he learns and improves us furthermore especially against top teams that play similar to City.

But also any team in the league, including so-called “title challengers” could concede 4-6 against City and no one would make a huge deal out of it. I’d even say this year RM and Bayern could lose by a similar result to City and it wouldn’t raise eye brows. People would just talk about how good City are. La Liga would probably just moan about “teams ruining football with money” etc

 

[GregM40]

No one is expecting us to topple City this season anyway, they're gonna spank most teams week in week out. I still think we're on track to progress as a team and improve in our general style of play. Top 4 and a trophy would be a fantastic season for us right now, but in the main it's about improving how we play and getting closer to what EtH wants.

 

[jem]

Didn’t we beat Man City several times under Ole? Somehow, Ole was deluded. And ETH is pragmatic. Troubles are still the same for our team, and it goes way back before Ole or ETH.

Ole was deluded because he favoured the likes of Maguire (making him captain within months of joining the team), McFred (as a duo), Shaw and Rashford (playing him when he was clearly unfit to play.) If by troubles, you are referring to the Glazers, then I agree, but that doesn't make Ole any less suitable for the job.

 

[Mmm-Qatarian]

Rather than positivity, I just think it's really daft to draw any drastic conclusions off the back of a single match against Manchester City at the Etihad. I'm not exaggerating when I say you're probably talking about one of the most difficult footballing fixtures that has ever existed in football in absolute terms there.

Yes, I feel that Ten Hag made mistakes. Yes, I think the performances were poor on the whole. Equally, the fact that we were several levels below City should have come as a surprise to nobody and it's daft to start berating the manager or, indeed, any single player based on that game alone.

 

[Lost bear]

The beauty of ETH is that after Brighton and Brentford he learnt and improved us. The main hope from this is that he learns and improves us furthermore especially against top teams that play similar to City.

But also any team in the league, including so-called “title challengers” could concede 4-6 against City and no one would make a huge deal out of it. I’d even say this year RM and Bayern could lose by a similar result to City and it wouldn’t raise eye brows. People would just talk about how good City are. La Liga would probably just moan about “teams ruining football with money” etc

Yes. City are at their peak, and it’s pretty awesome, however much it pains me to say it. But I’m actually feeling pretty good about United. I saw his bald head, and I’m a believer…I think we’re going to get pretty damn good ourselves over the next year or two.

 

[Deleted 112447]

I’m sure this could get amalgamated into other threads, but I feel a little positive still after this.

Yes it was naive (at best) to have McT and Eriksen in the midfield two and the players completely froze, but last season we wouldn’t have won the second half.

Sure, City slowed down and made subs, but we scored the first goal in the second half and capitalised on the slower play of City. Last year we’d have given up straight away and lost 7 or 8 nil.

So, whilst it’s shit, we must admit that results like this will happen to m the early stages of this rebuild, but the mentality is most important at this point.

It's not fair to only compare to last season. Most of these players have been here a while and for the last 3 years or so we got some decent results against City. We should have gone more defensive and less reliant on trying to control. The players were poor and mentality was a major issue but, the manager also fecked up in terms of tactics, for the result.

It was a complete s. show while the only possible positive is for ETH to realise that in some games, he can not go toe to toe less we be walked all over. The other potential positive is for the board to accept that we need both time and money to invest.

 

[Dansk]

I think it's entirely reasonable to say that the first two games of the season were a bizarre fluke that doesn't really represent the level of this team. If we replayed those games next week, we would most likely take at least four and possibly all six points from them. While things aren't perfect yet, we've come a long way since then. We've won five of the last six league games, and although it was ugly to lose to City in that manner, it's not as though losing to them is a staggering disappointment. We beat Arsenal 3-1, and they've had a brilliant season thus far, so that's every bit as positive as the loss to City was negative. There's plenty of reasons to be optimistic. If not for the banana peel in the beginning, we could very well have been comfortably in the top four by now with six or seven wins out of eight.

They haven't all been the most convincing wins, but that's to be expected with the situation we're in: a new manager having to glue a shattered squad back together, players having to claw their way back into form, and multiple new signings in key positions. If we can do this well under these circumstances, optimism is definitely warranted. If ETH can wring just 10% more out of this team, we're looking at a very feasible top four finish, as long there's no major implosion throughout the season. Chelsea are hardly looking comfortable so far, and it's practically the norm for Tottenham to fall apart in the winter.

If any of the teams behind us should stay the distance and overtake us over the course of the season, that would be a big surprise--Brighton and Newcastle have done well so far, but it'll be hugely unexpected if they kept it up until the end. It's more likely that one of the teams above us will stumble. Liverpool are having an absolute disaster of a season, and while they can't be written off definitively just yet, there are no signs whatsoever of them recovering in time to have a realistic chance of catching up. As such, I think we're one of the most likely candidates for a 4th place finish.

 

[Dominos]

Chelsea are hardly looking comfortable so far, and it's practically the norm for Tottenham to fall apart in the winter.

The issue with this logic is Chelsea and Spurs fans are also sat on their forums saying United aren't very good. We're not impressed when Chelsea and Spurs scrape close wins, and they're certainly not impressed that we're hanging on for dear life at the end of games against Leicester, Southampton and Everton.

It's really anyone's as I don't think there's a great deal between the sides on paper. On the pitch however Arsenal look better than the other contenders unfortunately. I'm still holding out for Arsenal implosion at some point to get dragged back into the race for 4th, they can't play this well all season and hopefully they pick up a couple of key injuries.

 

[Tyrion]

I would argue that @Dansk is wrong when he says the first two games were a fluke. They were reflections of how bad the teams self confidence was and how ill-suited they were to playing ETH's preferred style.

Liverpools struggles and Chelseas new manager mean we have a shot at top 4 that I didn’t expect us to have.