[Bilbo]

Terrible approach. Terrible performances. Terrible day.

Leicester lost 3-0. Its been a good day

 

[MrBest]

Thought it was a bad bad performance, i dont agree with the back 5 and much more. Life goes on.
Hopefully we can just focus on the league, get third and then focus on the Europa League.

 

[GledTheRed]

Give them 3 goals, what fecking chance have you got?

 

[Relevated]

I cba with these bottlers, everytime something is on the line, they give us this type of performance. Wouldn't be surprised if Moyesy does a job on us.

These guys are proper bottlers, they have no character.

 

[Ødegaard]

Moronic to not rest players now when the near future of the club needs us to reach the champions league, in my opinion.

 

[Betson]

Same. It is all about qualifying for UCL for me. Beat West Ham by a healthy margain on wednesday and we are there.

But it is not one or the other , you would think going by some here that qualifying for the FA cup final automatically disqualifies you from CL qualification.

Gone are the days of the big club mentality we used to have of just trying to win everything , because that is just what you do.

I cannot understand how any supporter is ok with losing any semi Final never mind an FA cup semi final against a big rival club and another big rival waiting in the final.

Why follow the club at all if days like today don't matter , I just cannot understand the mentality. But it seems to be shared by quote a few on this board.

 

[fallengt]

Watch us throw away the season now.

 

[r3idy]

Maguire and AWB (£130m) in particular are shocking.

A lot of people pinning this on AWB and his price tag (Which is a useless argument anyway) but to be fair to Chelsea, they boxed him in all game. What does he do hoof it up the field ?

 

[Gandalf Greyhame]

Ole took a gamble - if it had worked out with us hitting them with an early goal on the counter - he'd be lauded for his tactical masterclass. But instead we lost our only decent and fit backup CB to injury and had to switch our system up to one which didn't work on counters. Rashford was isolated and Bruno was always crowded out.

Both Lindelof and Maguire made defensive blunders today leading to goals, Williams looked particularly poor and of course DDG had 2 howlers as well. The entire defence shat itself, basically - which is concerning because that was at least our current best back 5 till Shaw is back.

Then of course - the refereeing. 20+ fouls, some very blatant and no cards at all. Lampard's words worked, the refs seemed very reluctant to hand anything to United. Zouma should have been off and we should have had a pen for Martial as well - but VAR fecked that up, too. It is difficult to play against 14 players with 2 days less rest in such a demanding schedule.

I don't blame Ole for this - I blame Maguire for concededing one of those goals and missing so many chances to score at the other end. Perhaps the head injury did leave him a bit concussed. And of course - we have to blame De Gea, these are too many mistakes for a club of our ambitions. I have been defending him staunchly so far, and I still think he may have a future here, but Ole needs to have the balls to drop him at some point. He cannot be so poor and untouchable.

I hope Ole takes a fine and gives the refs a piece of his mind.

Glad Greenwood, Pogba and Martial didn't play the whole game and that Rashford and AWB were taken off with 15 minutes to go. These little things might make the difference. Concerned about Bruno and Matic's fitness levels now, along with Maguire.

 

[Annihilate Now!]

Leicester lost 3-0. Its been a good day

Yeah but I lost at Uno earlier so it all balances out.

 

[SirScholes]

Yeah maybe. It is a difficult decision. I was surprised AWB didn't get a rest because his form has been poor and also was very surprised to not see Ighalo start.

yer likewise, whatever the starting 11 it was shocking absolutely shocking
Worse I’ve seen since the moyes days maybe even worse than that

 

[TheGodsInRed]

How can you think you can play a whole new system with 2 days and try and recover?

Hopefully it doesn’t affect our confidence too much as we have looked leggy since Bournemouth.

 

[Banana Republic]

Non of the forward players are capable or willing to contribute to stopping the opposition when they are building from the back, or building play through the midfield. We just let them have the run of the pitch and pile all the pressure on our midfield players, who are stretched and being pulled all over the place because the front 3 or 4 are missing, and putting the defence under constant pressure.

Rashford, James, Martial and Greenwood, are all guilty in this regard.

We have a team with too many lightweights, who are not prepared, or are even capable of properly closing down players or pressing properly. As for tackle, I don’t think most of them can spell it, never mind understand what the word means.

Contrast that with Chelsea today, Southampton last week, Liverpool all season and plenty of mid table teams, who all know how to stop the opposition and break up play.

Also, if you are going to play 5 at the back, then you need to dominate midfield as well, allowing your full backs to get forward. Oli got it wrong with just using Fred and Matic and pushing Bruno up front. Chelsea just took over completely as a result.

We got away with it against Southampton last week, with a draw. Today we had our pants pulled down from start to finish.

 

[bsCallout]

Only 5 outfield players played on Thursday, most of them defenders. What was the excuses for the lack of quality further up?
Also, why didn't Ighalo start?

Funnily enough it was our defenders that struggled the most.

That De Gea is done.

 

[jlecesne]

Could list most of the players as poor performers, fact is one team was fresher than the other. Would have been a different game if we played Tuesday.

Agreed. Can’t make excuses for some things. But, ultimately we saw a team on four days rest vs a team on two days rest.

 

[CM]

It was a mistake starting with a back 3 but the reality is that's easily reftifiable if de Gea doesn't do what he does. I probably wouldn't care if I felt Chelsea played well but it was an easy day for them after being given a 2 goal headstart.

 

[eire-red]

1st loss in 20 and we're in crisis again, whereas inconsistent Chelsea are now the second coming with this 'young, inexperienced' squad. The BBC narrative is sickening, everyone loves to take a swipe at United when we're down. The commentary is more frustrating than the game itself.

Back to reality, we do in fact have a young squad, and the players looked tired today with less rest, and showed a bit of inexperience at times. I've seen enough over our 19 game unbeaten run to know I'd much rather be a United fan than a Chelsea fan, in terms of looking ahead to next season. They're lost to us 3 times already this season, you could just tell this was their Cup Final already.

On another note, did not like Pogba's attitude when he came on to help turn the tide for us. Wasn't going his way and he seemed to throw the toys out the window. Brilliant when things are going his way, but saw the same last season at the Nou Camp.

Disappointing day, but I would rather us win our next two and finish ahead of Chelsea in the League than miss out on CL but win the FA Cup. As much as I hate to support the scousers, I hope the cnuts destroy Chelsea on Wednesday.

 

[NewGlory]

Yeah I worry how this affects the confidence and momentum. It will now most likely be a horrible nervy affair against West ham.

We are going to be fine, if De Gea doesn't decide to feck up and give two goals away, again. Can never tell when that lad will shit his pants. He was good against Southampton and Crystal Palace, and then this shit-show. Full-backs need to show up, as well. While De Gea should have saved both of these goals, it's undeniable that Lindelof and Maguire were also very bad. Well, Maguire scored an own-goal, so - yeah, as bad as De Gea in this specific game.

 

[G-manc]

Yeah good point. But the mistakes by Lindelof and Maguire are typically the ones which cost goals so they are the ones we as fans tend to focus on more.

Apart from still offering next to zero going forwards in a five, he now looks a yard off the pace defensively too.

 

[OleGunnar20]

While I get Ole's squad management hasn't paid off today, I find it hard to put much of the blame on him.

De Gea has choked when it most matters what, three years running now? Enough is enough, he needs replacing. Henderson and Romero duking it out would be ideal, if we can possibly find someone to take David off our hands.

Lindelof is about as passive a CB as I've ever seen, also needs replacing. A fit and firing Bailly would be a great partner to Maguire but relying on him to turn it around would be Jonesian level madness. Plenty of promising options out there, not a bad summer to be shopping for a CB id say.

Get Sancho in along with these two upgrades and we've got an 11 to challenge any team in the world. Depth can be worked out over the next year or two.

Shite game and very dissapointing result but hey ho, we were obviously knackered out there.

Let's get top four and take a real run at the Europa.

 

[Davie Moyes]

Bad day at the office. Move on and try to get it out of the system and also try to rest and recuperate ahead of next match.

As per last few matches took ages to get going and looked tired due to lack of rotation. Then the head injury affected the Utd players.

Dr Gea needs taking out of the firing line, is costing us too much.

 

[mu4c_20le]

We were awful until Bailly's injury. Unable to make 3 passes together, under 40% possession, had one shot (from Bruno's free kick) and Chelsea was pressing us with 6 players in our own half.

And what did they do with that possession? Absolutely nothing. We were defending well and had a copule of big guns on the bench to bring on and hit them harder and harder on the counter. Even James who was poor found plenty of space a few times. I could see us nick this if we hadn't conceded two quick goals like that so stupidly.

 

[chris123]

Realistically the Leicester result is what mattered today, but who knows what the feck Ole was thinking today. Ends up playing the entire starting XI despite looking fatigued, and they put in a poor performance anyone. Just a horrible management of the situation really where we get neither the desired rest time or the result we wanted.

 

[Heinzesight]

Lampard certainly worked his magic on Mike Dean. Not that’s why we were so wank but Ole needs to mention their persistent fouling with no yellows. Terrible reffing.

 

[RedRJ]

I am so done with De Gea. I don't even care about FA Cup that much. Winning the next two matches and qualifying for Champions League is 1000x times more important. But De Gea has to go. He's been making idiotic mistakes all season. We can't win anything with him being so unreliable. We have a perfectly good goalkeeper on loan who is dying to get a chance, and there's zero reason why we should put up with this bullshit


Agree 100%

Completely agree. I don’t think Ole has the balls to drop De Gea at this stage of the season, but any howlers in the next two game’s are likely to be catastrophic to our chances of top 4, with the inevitable knock-on effect on our budget for new players.

 

[Nori-]

That hurt. We were so bad.

It's going to hurt 10x more if we don't make top 4 though. Get todays result out of the system, get spirits back up and all eyes on West Ham now.

Spurs did us a massive favour earlier today, now we capitalise on it. GGMU!!

 

[mazhar13]

Agreed, though I'd add Chelsea did the ugly work far better than us and played pretty well at times.

We allowed them to in the 2nd half. In the first half, they didn't have much other than Azpilicueta coming forward without much resistance, but even then, their crosses weren't that threatening. In the 2nd half, however, our defensive transitions were much worse, and the players lost any fight they had in them. Bruno Fernandes was the only one who was playing at a 100% throughout the match.

 

[DeGea]

Football has changed, most teams are now decent so you can't just turn up.
So you either accept you want to go for everything and play your strongest 11 in the FA cup semis, or you make a decision that you want to rest everyone as Champions League is a priority and just play a second string side with a smash and grab strategy i.e. park the bus and nick it in the end.
We did a halfway house today, in the end didn't rest key players and didn't play well either.
Wrong decision making by the management team today but they will learn from this.

 

[red woppit]

Maguire and AWB (£130m) in particular are shocking.

AWB has looked off the pace for the past three games, needs a break I think, thought TFM looked so much better when he came on. Maguire seems to slow the game down more and more over the past weeks, don't think that helps us.

 

[Stacks]

Funnily enough it was our defenders that struggled the most.

That De Gea is done.

I kind of agree. although our passing looked atrocious

 

[quirkey]

Why didn’t Romero start? Bit of a slap in the face for him.

 

[ReallyUSA]

But it is not one or the other , you would think going by some here that qualifying for the FA cup final automatically disqualifies you from CL qualification.

Gone are the days of the big club mentality we used to have of just trying to win everything , because that is just what you do.

I cannot understand how any supporter is ok with losing any semi Final never mind an FA cup semi final against a big rival club and another big rival waiting in the final.

Why follow the club at all if days like today don't matter , I just cannot understand the mentality. But it seems to be shared by quote a few on this board.

You aren't being objective whatsoever. The team is running on fumes, Chelsea had two full more days rest, we don't have the depth, and we are mounting up injuries. Of course we all wanted to win, but we don't have to be sad little children because we didn't.

 

[stevoc]

One to forget.

 

[Ventura]

Don't care about the result, but it's annoying that we let players tire and pick up injuries. I told Ole to rest absolutely every single body, and he refused to listen to me.

 

[PoTMS]

Two silver linings.

It could've been worse. We genuinely could've lost this one by 6 or 7.

And secondly as much as it sounds harsh, it's just the FA Cup. Only people who care about it is the winners. No one else gives a feck.

 

[choiboyx012]

Should have played our second string players, the ones who have the energy and a point to prove. Ighalo, mctominay, lingard, mata/andreas, romero should have started

 

[Shiva87]

Changed the team, rested players, changed the system, throws away a semi-final...

Ends game with full team

Or played a changed team and system, got a bad injury, changed the system, let in a goal while players were readjusting, goalkeeper chucks the ball in the net when second half begins. Chasing a game 2-0 down, gets best players on the pitch but they didn't do anything.

Quality teams won't allow United to come back from that far down. DDG really cost us very badly today, especially the timing of that 2nd goal. No way that should end up in our net.

 

[tombombadil]

Very frustrating game. Sloppy from start to finish. Poor passing. Poor movement and positioning, repeatedly running into the same spaces and each other. It seems the team truly is tired.

Chelsea pressed superbly but that of course is because United only have less than 2 days to rest while they have more than 4 days to rest. Chelsea was allowed to persistently foul with the stamping, kicking and pushing to disrupt play and it worked a charm.

Even then, United did well to keep them out for almost all of the first half until Lindelof and Wan Bissaka were caught ball watching and played the Chelsea player on side and then Lindelof got pushed aside too easily. The second half was more of the same but this time De Gea was day dreaming. By the third, the team more or less gave up.

 

[DomesticTadpole]

Meaningless result.
Keeper mistakes.
Shambolic refereeing.

If it impacts on the WHU game it will not be meaningless. Now we will see if Ole can rouse them for that. They cannot start feeling sorry for themselves.

 

[Stookie]

Shambolic management and a performance to match. One of the worst displays I’ve seen a united team perform. I can’t think of one good thing to say.