[leontas]

Had to take some time to collect my thoughts because that was one of the most frustrating games of football I have ever watched.

These kind of games where we have a number of chances to score, but we're not clinical enough is happening way too often this season. What made today even worse, was the fact that we actually had a number of really clear cut chances to score. Rooney's header, Pogba's one-on-one, Zlatan's tap-in and penalty are just some of the chances that come to mind.

We didn't take those chances today because of a lack of sharpness, probably due to fatigue that comes with our crazy game schedule. For this, Mourinho should take some of the responsibility, because he didn't rotate enough. Zlatan, for example, could've been rested and brought on as a second half substitute, if needed. He's 35 and while he's a very important player for us, he can't start every single game.

More generally though, we struggle to break down teams that sit back and defend. The second half today, when Bournemouth decided to simply stay in their own half, we didn't know exactly how to break them down. We were too eager to score that we rushed all our passes and crosses and gave the ball away too cheaply. And we generally lacked a quality wide player that could've stretched the Bournemouth defence and make things happen for us. What was also concerning was the lack of organisation we showed in the second half, especially after Carrick came off.

We still have a long way to go to be genuine title contenders next season and I hope Mourinho has a clear plan on how to get us there.

 

[RedMaestro]

We didn't take those chances today because of a lack of sharpness, probably due to fatigue that comes with our crazy game schedule. For this, Mourinho should take some of the responsibility, because he didn't rotate enough. Zlatan, for example, could've been rested and brought on as a second half substitute, if needed. He's 35 and while he's a very important player for us, he can't start every single game.

Totally agree with this. Clearly down to fatigue. Mourinho's going to have to be really smart this month. Make or break.

 

[MadMike]

A lot of posters are debating if Zlatan should have been subbed. Zlatan scores goals. Who's to know this was not going to be another day Zlatan would not have come up with a goal?

Hindsight is great.

Because you go by what you see on the pitch. Let's turn this around and say that it's a defender that's making mistake after mistake, would you say "keep him on the pitch he's our best defender he might make a goal line clearance". No you wouldn't.

Half the match-day thread people were saying that needed to be subbed at half time, me included. That's not with hindsight, that was at the time.

Zlatan was angry all that first half, getting in spats with Mings, complaining at Martial when he barely passed the ball himself once, making all the wrong decisions, missing golden chances and to be honest he should have been sent off. If you don't substitute him when he's playing that badly, then by your argument you should never ever substitute your best player unless he's injured. Ever.

I don't agree with that thought.

 

[SirMattBugsby]

The result feels like a devastating blow in the top 4 race. There are times in games when the team is utterly dominant and the lack of urgency to go for the jugular and finish teams off is really worrying. If United got 2-0 up that game would have been over but after scoring the first goal the lack of urgency was incredible.

I am amazed how many are citing Carrick going off as a turning point. That was one of the worst performances I've seen from him in a United shirt. The second half was an ideal game for him but he lacked composure, his passing was terrible and he got booked because he was incapable of chasing a player.

The subs were poor. None of them added anything. Blind and Herrera would have been far better options than Lingard and Fellaini.

When Fergie's United scored those late goals, the key wasn't throwing on lots of strikers. It was building pressure and laying siege to the opposition goal. A tiring defence under lots of pressure will panic and make mistakes. When this United team chases games they are the team that panics.

I can only assume you didn't see Carrick in the first half, because he was regularly starting offensive moves with his forward passing, interceptions and tackles.

Having said that, he did tail off in the second half, so I agree his sub was not a turning point, although the replacement (Fellaini) was poor.

Agree about everything else, esp the last part. Mourinho's 'United way' seems like an uncultured version of Fergus's beliefs. It's as if he is blindly following the formula without having conviction in it.

 

[surf]

Hello Griezmann.

 

[El Zoido]

Still fuming about this.

 

[marukomu]

So the morning after and sober. What the feck happened yesterday?

 

[pascell]

So the morning after and sober. What the feck happened yesterday?

Mixture of things really, we coasted when we got it to 1-0, missed great chances, their keeper had a good game, they equalised and sat back, we shat our pants and resulted to hoof ball.

 

[ti vu]

I can only assume you didn't see Carrick in the first half, because he was regularly starting offensive moves with his forward passing, interceptions and tackles.

Having said that, he did tail off in the second half, so I agree his sub was not a turning point, although the replacement (Fellaini) was poor.

Agree about everything else, esp the last part. Mourinho's 'United way' seems like an uncultured version of Fergus's beliefs. It's as if he is blindly following the formula without having conviction in it.

Problem in how people judge Carrick is that people don't take the tempo into consideration. Carrick makes good foward/ attacking passes, no doubt. The problem is we have a slow attacking line. Our fastest attacker off movement is subpar leading to him receiving ball mostly from stand still point than at the end of a through ball. We need to play at faster tempo so we don't need to brute force from stand still point to beat Bournemouth defense (requires players with great acceleration & maze dribbling skill). Carrick just prefers to play at slower tempo. He dictate the tempo to fit his preference other than suitability to the team, that's the real issue. Pogba also takes too many touches = our tempo is lethargic when we should go for the second goal. Once they got the equalizer, we're in trouble getting back to first gear now that we're complete in slow mode.

I don't understand Fellaini sub neither.

Mourinho's never the same as SAF' way. SAF's fundamental lies with the wing play & box overloaded tactic. Mourinho fundamental lies with the no 10 or second forward, inside wing forward while fullback become wingback but isolated.

 

[don't sign old players]

- Rooney & Zlatan make each other appear old and slow when they're together. Its exponential too.
- seeing Zlatan, Pogba & Fellaini bomb into the box together late in the game, all of them 6 foot 4 and above, I think we could do with Griezmann to break things up a bit. After watching a game like that I think it's quite possible Griezmann could have more impact on this team than anyone.
Rojo was best on ground for mine.

 

[POF]

I can only assume you didn't see Carrick in the first half, because he was regularly starting offensive moves with his forward passing, interceptions and tackles.

Having said that, he did tail off in the second half, so I agree his sub was not a turning point, although the replacement (Fellaini) was poor.

Agree about everything else, esp the last part. Mourinho's 'United way' seems like an uncultured version of Fergus's beliefs. It's as if he is blindly following the formula without having conviction in it.

He did ok in the first half but the second half was when he should have come into his own. Experienced head in midfield, opposition playing 4-4-1, lots of time on the ball and the opportunity to dictate the tempo, he was terrible. He gave the ball away far too often and played some really low percentage passes.

Pogba is an incredible talent whose decision making regularly lets him down. In the second half yesterday, I think Carrick's decision making was worse.

I wonder if Scholes would consider coming out of retirement again. He'd have bossed that game.

 

[Jaxdan]

Not much to say. Probably the worst I've felt about our performance since the Chelsea debacle. So many missed chances against a small club in bad form. I'm a huge fan of Zlatan, but he was God awful today. Pogba as well. Nobody played particularly well...nobody. And of course the opposing keeper plays lights out again. Just really disappointing we draw so much to lesser teams at the Theater of Dreams. 10 draws in all. At least half of those should have been wins. We are what we are and don't deserve top 4.

 

[Nakhon Phanom]

The way the match started it was like United were going to win 8-2 on chances created.Once Rojo scored I thought we were going to get a hatful but it never materialized.How you cant score against a mediocre team with 10 men for a full 45 minutes plus is very poor.
Zlatan had a stinker.....probably best if he and that shit,Mings,had been sent off then someone else could have taken the penalty.
Rooney....bless him......best if he goes to China at the end of the season to save his fading reputation.
On the plus side,nice to see Rojo get his first Premiership goal and a decent performance from him,also.....but I'd actually give MOM to Luke Shaw.
But 7 home draws,so far,is going to cost us dear for a top 4 slot,I think.

 

[AN17]

We have no one else to blame for our failings. Got a chance to get the winner on a platter when we got the penalty, but Zlatan just fluffed it like the gazillion chances he did in the first half.
Pogba misses two easy chances both at the beginning and the end.
Rooney forgets to take the ball on the chest and hit it rather than go for a weak looping header in the early minutes, he also have lost the confidence in his ability to take a first time shot by the looks of it.

Zlatan, aside from a penalty miss, he was atrocius with his first touch on 3 or 4 occasions. He fluffed it when Rooney squared the ball for a tap in, same when Martial crossed to him.

Martial was greedy too. Took the difficult near post shot too many times rather than square it to a better positioned player.

Aside from the penalty we had atleast 4 or 5 must score oppurtunities which we bottled, another 3 or 4 half chances.

Season could be decided within the upcoming 2 or 3 games if we don't get our shit together.

 

[shabin_d_great]

I am still angry Havent watched any football after the match.. The moment i think about the result, i feel like breaking something.. No frustration, no sadness. just anger.. Dont know against whom though...

 

[NinjaZombie]

think Carrick is done tbh
We will be bringing in a defensive midfielder.

Strange....him being taken off resulted in us panicking in possession. Pogba turned into a complete mess once Fellaini became his midfield partner and he had to take charge of the midfield. What made you say this?

 

[Esquire]

We might as well just focus on the cups. The league mentality seems to be any chance to leave the comfort of 6th position and they seize up. 1-0 up as well against that utter pile of dross that Everton put 6 past a few weeks ago.

Zlatan has had a good season but how many of these draws are on him? Let's be honest.

Let's be honest we wouldn't even be 6th if it wasn't for him. FFS give Ibra a break. If there is one person I'd forgive yesterday it would be Ibra. Other players deserve much more scrutiny. Rooney is simply a waste of space these days. Pogba, as much as I like him, is a complete bust at this point. Herrera needs to start every game. Martial was ok and Rashford is still too young to lead the line. Phil Jones is reverting back to his normal form. We still have a long way to go despite some progress. Top 4 will be a struggle but I think we will stay have a good chance to make it. Arsenal will be in free fall and Liverpool will still be inconsistent.

 

[Esquire]

Strange....him being taken off resulted in us panicking in possession. Pogba turned into a complete mess once Fellaini became his midfield partner and he had to take charge of the midfield. What made you say this?

Carrick is servicable but we need an upgrade in def mid. Herrera should have started. Pogba was poor from start to finish.

 

[Esquire]

Everything was terrible after we scored. The crowd, the ref, our players, the substitutions. And our big players in Ibra and Pogba both lost their heads.

If some fecker stamped on your head like that you'd lose the plot too. No excuses for Pogba.

 

[mav_9me]

Still fuming about this.

Me too. I keep replaying the first Pogba chance in the beginning, the Zlatan chance from Martial cross, the penalty.....still fuming.

On the one hand it makes you realize we deserve to be where we are in the table. On the other hand you know Arsenal, Liverpool and even spurs are not that great or better than us. Frustrating as hell and hard to accept that 6th is our position, particularly give all the improvement we can clearly see.

 

[mav_9me]

We might as well just focus on the cups. The league mentality seems to be any chance to leave the comfort of 6th position and they seize up. 1-0 up as well against that utter pile of dross that Everton put 6 past a few weeks ago.

Zlatan has had a good season but how many of these draws are on him? Let's be honest.

Completely agree. Personally would not go into next season with him as our main striker. My big concern is his general play and not the chances he's missing. To me he reminds me a lot of RVN in his last season. Scoring goals but not quite fitting well with the youngsters in the team.

 

[manutd7]

Rooney cant be involved in our starting XI. Rooney cant be involved in any of our front 6 positions. So all in all, Rooney can't play

 

[devips]

Totally agree with this. Clearly down to fatigue. Mourinho's going to have to be really smart this month. Make or break.

Yeah, Zlatan missed the penalty because of fatigue. Right.

 

[sunama]

What's bizarre is how well we started, we cutting through them so easily and they were all over the shop. I just don't understand how we didn't capitalise on that and give ourselves at least a 2-0 lead.

We are verey good against teams who want to score.
Against the Park the bus tactic we are useless.

In the first half, they wanted to score. They attacked us. So we played well.
In the second half they did not want to score. They parked the bus and a 0-0 scoreline in the 2nd half was as expected.

 

[sunama]

Yeah, Zlatan missed the penalty because of fatigue. Right.

That was a great penalty he took. It was low, on the ground, to the right.
The GK made a wonder save, almost as if he knew exactly where Ibra was going to place it.

 

[sunama]

A front 4 containing Zlat, Mata and Rooney is always going to be a problem, too easy to defend against. The lack of pace is ridiculous and it was a poor decision from Jose to start them all.

Pace is over-rated.
We brought on Rashford. So in the 2nd half, after the subs, we had Martial, Rashford, Martial and Lingard all on the pitch at the same time. The result? Zero goals.
The problem is that when teams park the bus, we seem unable to open them up. This is the case whichever combination of players we use.

I was looking at the pie chart from the match day thread:

Our fans really were confident that we'd get a result here. Some even though we'd score 4 or 5 goals!

 

[NinjaZombie]

Pace is over-rated.
We brought on Rashford. So in the 2nd half, after the subs, we had Martial, Rashford, Martial and Lingard all on the pitch at the same time. The result? Zero goals.
The problem is that when teams park the bus, we seem unable to open them up. This is the case whichever combination of players we use.

I was looking at the pie chart from the match day thread:

Our fans really were confident that we'd get a result here. Some even though we'd score 4 or 5 goals!

By the time they came on, Bournemouth were down to 10, and had set up shop in their box. Pace was useless by then. But in the first half, with the game looking open, there was an opportunity to be able to use pace to get in behind them.

Still gutted at this result. We're effectively one extra point behind the rest, with our pathetic goal difference. We should just concentrate on the Europa now.

 

[Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber]

Still can't finish as a team. Should have buried them in first half.

 

[Giggs86]

How come every half-assed keeper who comes to Old Trafford is guaranteed to have the game of his life? Every fecking time.

 

[GailSpaceWynand]

How come every half-assed keeper who comes to Old Trafford is guaranteed to have the game of his life? Every fecking time.

Indeed. It's happening far too often now though our players have to take some blame too; they missed sitters -
Rooney missed that header after which he seemed reluctant to shoot but did create some chances for Zlatan later on. Martial was good with his direct running, Pogba was great in the first half, but without Carrick to start play in the second, it was down to him to change flanks, keep up the pressure as Mata was screaming to anyone who would care to listen - when a team is down to 10 men, increase the tempo, tire them out; we did the opposite. Zlatan was shite but he is allowed one bad day (probably due to fatigue, I presume). Mou surprised me when he sent on Fellaini not because he can't be useful but since we didn't have herrera I knew there would be a problem. In the second half, we lacked leaders - Zlatan was clearly out for blood (not without reason), no Herrera, Carrick, Smalling (he's vocal) and it showed.
Anyway, just another frustating day at OT, on to the next now and hope our players came come up with a reaction.

 

[Borys]

I don't get this either.

Think one of the problems is that Mourinho doesn't have Fergie's skill at chasing a game.

Under Fergie, if things weren't going to plan he would either keep going because he thought it would eventually bear fruit, or bring on someone more creative. He wouldn't launch a big lump up front until the last five minutes - we wouldn't stop playing football.

Mourinho in contrast seems to throw the Belgian plank on as his go-to option. He does it far too early and it generally makes us worse, not better. I thought we were doing ok until Fellaini came on today but after that it was aimless. That's been the story far too often.

I can't fully agree, we've seen us chasing game multiple times this season but yesterday was different. We didn't really create many chances in the second half either. I can understand hoofing the ball in the last 5-10 minutes as you said but against 10 man we should've played it on the ground.

 

[DomesticTadpole]

I can't fully agree, we've seen us chasing game multiple times this season but yesterday was different. We didn't really create many chances in the second half either. I can understand hoofing the ball in the last 5-10 minutes as you said but against 10 man we should've played it on the ground.

We played right into their hands. Against 10 men you stretch the play, get them running around even more until they are tired, not hoof the ball, they can group together and defend that all day with ease.

 

[Treble]

The first 30 min were great (apart from Zlatan, that is), the next 60 were amongst the worst this season. Not being able to create enough chances vs 10 men Bournemouth at OT is piss poor.

 

[FireballXL5]

The thing that really bugs me is that after the triple substitution.....nothing happened except we got worse.
Lingard, Fellaini and Rashford had absolutely no impact whatsoever. So pissed off.

 

[DomesticTadpole]

The thing that really bugs me is that after the triple substitution.....nothing happened except we got worse.
Lingard, Fellaini and Rashford had absolutely no impact whatsoever. So pissed off.

Problem with the changes is that not sure there is a brain between them. I will let Rashford off because he is a kid and inexperienced. We needed guile, someone who could use his intelligence.

 

[Parma Dewol]

So frustrated. Still can't believe we didn't win that. Haven't watched any highlights yet but at the game it felt like we wasted chance after chance. We should have been out of sight within half an hour, because Bournemouth were frankly shocking. Their defence was gifting us opportunities and we couldn't put them away.

Also feels like our ill-discipline cost us. We were cruising at the half-hour mark and it seemed a question of how many could we score. Then we let the game become itty-bitty with unnecessary incidents. That's exactly what Bouremouth would have wanted and we played right into their hands. Bet they couldn't believe their luck when we started throwing their players to the ground, and after half an hour of good football, the game descended into another hour of fouling, feigning injury and time wasting.

Huge chance to cement out top-four ambition and we blew it. Now need a big reaction in Russia on Thursday and at Stamford Bridge on Monday night.

 

[boxykronikle]

Zlatan was off from the start. He had decent half chances but unable to bury it. Not even talking about the penalty.

He should've been sent off for that elbow as well. I thought that Jose will take him off after HT seeing his woeful performance. Rooney looked sharper than he did.

Collectively, it was really a frustrating performance from the team. After the send off, Bournemouth doesn't have any other option but to go route 1. I would do the same if I was managing them. Play 10 men behind the ball and lump it to the speedy forward.

 

[Salus Populi Suprema Lex]

I'm still raging this morning. Massive dent to our top four chances. All these draws may end up costing us.

 

[elmo]

How come every half-assed keeper who comes to Old Trafford is guaranteed to have the game of his life? Every fecking time.

Because our players keep shooting straight at them instead of putting it in the net. We've made loads of keepers look good this season when the reality is that our players just aren't that good at scoring.

 

[Fitchett]

Still really p*ssed off. Can't believe how we weren't 4-0 up after 30 minutes, then let Bournemouth off the hook and couldn't beat a poor 10 man team. Not to mention the inept refereeing, the fact that I pay good money to watch a football match and end up only seeing half a game, as the referee failed to control their time wasting antics. They were even worse than Hull were. Another major fail that will cost us a top four place. Bournemouth have now joined Sunderland and Hull as being the three teams I do not want to see in the PL at Old Trafford next season.