[Berbasbullet]

Only saw the first half, but Rashford was in some proper dangerous positions to run in behind them, a few times Fellaini or whoever just failed to provide the quality, if one of those balls go through and Rashford scores the narrative suddenly changes.

I would have taken a point, move on and win at the weekend and things look a bit brighter.

 

[Eddy_JukeZ]

Indeed, and it's hard to be too bitchy because I would've probably taken a draw beforehand, but while I've never been one to rock the Jose boat, that was awful, and I'm not going to try and sugar coat it either.

We gave up the mere notion of attacking after about 30 minutes, and while I appreciate there wasn't a great deal of choice on the bench, it can't just be blythly acceptable to cut our losses after half an hour. I expected at least some kind of reaction in the second half, motivationally or tactically. Instead we just said "feck it, try and score"...

This kind of thing rarely bothers me, but there will have been millions of viewers around the world thinking United were little better than a plucky lower league side playing for a 3rd round FA Cup replay.

Yeah same. I've been supportive of Jose all season, but disregarding the result(which I know may be a cop-out), I just hated the way we played today.

It wasn't Barcelona with Messi-Xavi-Iniesta in their pomp who we faced today.

It was a City team who've been smashed a few times this season(and have been poor at home as well in the league) being only 1 point ahead of us.

I really hope it was just a one-off.

 

[Red Dreams]

TFM is injured.

damn. did not know that.

 

[sunama]

Team does not get nearly enough credit. We're unbeaten in 25 league games after a marathon season, these guys are shattered, some of them have played 3 games a week for the past month. Fatigue is very real and performance affecting. Yet we still fight. We were missing our best defender, best creative midfielder and best attacker through injury, the spine of our first team ripped out. These guys are running on fumes now, and they took a point in one of the hardest fixtures all season. No complaints from me tonight, on to Swansea.

This sums it up for me, nicely.

 

[sunama]

It was a City team who've been smashed a few times this season(and have been poor at home as well in the league) being only 1 point ahead of us.

We are the 5th best team in the EPL, so going toe-to-toe with a team roughly equal to us, minus our best 3 players injured, in an away game was never going to be a game we were favoured to win.
Jose was pragmatic and decided to play for the draw or a possible 1-0. In our next game, he shall set the team up to win.

 

[el3mel]

Yeah same. I've been supportive of Jose all season, but disregarding the result(which I know may be a cop-out), I just hated the way we played today.

It wasn't Barcelona with Messi-Xavi-Iniesta in their pomp who we faced today.

It was a City team who've been smashed a few times this season(and have been poor at home as well in the league) being only 1 point ahead of us.

I really hope it was just a one-off.

They weren't Barca, but we were the ones missing most of our key players in a single match. There's always another way to look at it, and again it wasn't just him parking the bus , too. it was also due to City's high pressure on our midfield and our players were horrible in controlling the ball or passing under pressure that led to us losing possession quickly every time we got the ball. Carrick, Fellainin and Mikhi all fail easily as a victims for their pressure through the whole game.

If our midfield could control the ball much better than this under pressure, the game would have looked much better , we wouldn't have been attacking all the time either but we would have been able to create some good chances or counters rather than what happened.

Don't know why everyone can't see the high pressing City were doing the whole game especially in the first half.

 

[Eddy_JukeZ]

We are the 5th best team in the EPL, so going toe-to-toe with a team roughly equal to us, minus our best 3 players injured, in an away game was never going to be a game we were favoured to win.
Jose was pragmatic and decided to play for the draw or a possible 1-0. In our next game, he shall set the team up to win.

I didn't mean us going toe-to-toe with them, but a bit more attacking intent would have been nice. Their defense is incredibly poor.

But again, can't complain about the point.

 

[Eddy_JukeZ]

They weren't Barca, but we were the ones missing most of our key players in a single match. There's always another way to look at it, and again it wasn't just him parking the bus , too. it was also due to City's high pressure on our midfield and our players were horrible in controlling the ball or passing under pressure that led to us losing possession quickly every time we got the ball. Carrick, Fellainin and Mikhi all fail easily as a victims for their pressure through the whole game.

If our midfield could control the ball much better than this under pressure, the game would have looked much better , we wouldn't have been attacking all the time either but we would have been able to create some good chances or counters rather than what happened.

Don't know why everyone can't see the high pressing City were doing the whole game especially in the first half.

Yes, you could say our execution was awful and I do agree. A lot of our players didn't cope well with City's pressing.

Hopefully that's something we improve upon as a team. Think it's still a problem we have.

 

[Jonno]

The mind boggles that some fans are criticising our tactics. City looked fresh, fit and dangerous today, if it wasn't for our deep defensive tactic in numbers and trying to take the sting out of the game we would have quite easily conceded 2 or 3 and lost the game and all hopes of a top 4 finish.

It was obvious to see if Fellaini hadn't got sent off we were about to spring a last 15 minute go at their defence with the introduction of Lingard, and he destroyed our whole shape. Shame for him as he's had a decent season. Just when I want to have faith in him and trust him in big games, he gives a penalty away against Everton, he gently headbutts Aguero knowing he's going to get a red (or a yellow).... very poor from him.

So how's our midfield now? TFM injured, Pogba injured, Fellaini suspended, Carrick surely can't manage another 90 minutes in 3 days, Blind occupied in CB, shall we give Park and Rafael Da Silva a call?

 

[sunama]

Not sure where Mikki was tonight tho, I cannot recall him doing anything of note. He should have been the link between the midfield and the attack that was sorely missing tonight

I feel that Miki has been weak in EPL games.
In EU games though, the guy generally gets us a goal.

 

[Laphroaig]

To get a draw away at City when we were up againt those injuries, that fixture list and that ref, and they never really threatened us... I'm sort of proud. They resorted to cheating and not even that was good enough to beat us. If we had Rojo and Pogba this would have been a comfortable win. Oh well. Upwards and onwards.

 

[antohan]

Only saw the first half, but Rashford was in some proper dangerous positions to run in behind them, a few times Fellaini or whoever just failed to provide the quality, if one of those balls go through and Rashford scores the narrative suddenly changes.

I would have taken a point, move on and win at the weekend and things look a bit brighter.

Same here, had a meeting second half. It seemed to me the setup was right and Herrera really shouldn't miss such a glorious chance. Those are the few you get in such a game and have to be putting them away.

By the sounds of it we were lucky to get a point, something I would have reluctantly settled for seeing the lineups.

It's the threadbare squad that has me worried. As it stands we have a better shot at top 4 than the Europa.

 

[Organic Potatoes]

Who on Earth is going to give Carrick or Ander a breather during the run-in now with Tofu Monster and Felli out? Willock? Rooney? Scholes...?

 

[Jonno]

Yes, you could say our execution was awful and I do agree. A lot of our players didn't cope well with City's pressing.

Hopefully that's something we improve upon as a team. Think it's still a problem we have.

I think with a stronger line up, we would have combated it better. We tried to spring out on the counter, we were set up that way, but City were too quick, fit and aggressive and we were simply outplayed and overpowered. I don't really blame us for being outplayed with the amount of injuries and preparation time. If Mourinho had told his players to push higher up and be more adventurous we might have got a goal but easily conceded 2 or 3.

City needed the win really, the onus was on them to win they couldn't. They couldn't break us down, hats off to Jose, he's currently working miracles with this squad he really is.

 

[broccoli]

After this exhibition you can't say no to this result just like you wouldn't for free blowjobs. Where the feck i sign up?

 

[broccoli]

I gave a 10 to Fellaini for this match. And i can explain why. The moment he was red carded and you all jumped on the poor fella ini, he went off unfairly but never succumbed to Aguero antics. He remained true to his man self. I would despise a player doing that sorta antics with my club's shirt. So that's why Fellaini was a true red tonight. A man before a football player. Like the United greats of the past have always been.

 

[horsechoker]

After this exhibition you can't say no to this result just like you wouldn't for free blowjobs. Where the feck i sign up?

Depends on who's giving it. For example, if it was this, I would politely decline.

Spoiler

 

[Djemba-Djemba]

I gave a 10 to Fellaini for this match. And i can explain why. The moment he was red carded and you all jumped on the poor fella ini, he went off unfairly but never succumbed to Aguero antics. He remained true to his man self. I would despise a player doing that sorta antics with my club's shirt. So that's why Fellaini was a true red tonight. A man before a football player. Like the United greats of the past have always been.

This has to be a wind up

 

[caid]

I didn't mean us going toe-to-toe with them, but a bit more attacking intent would have been nice. Their defense is incredibly poor.

But again, can't complain about the point.

I think its kind of hard to judge the intent, we were just really, really poor in possession.
Its hard to get up the pitch if you cant string 2 passes together. We just didn't give ourselves a chance to actually have a go at them.

I get that we were defending deep and were quite defensive but i just dont think it was part of the plan to be that unambitious going forward

 

[Red Dreams]

We are the 5th best team in the EPL, so going toe-to-toe with a team roughly equal to us, minus our best 3 players injured, in an away game was never going to be a game we were favoured to win.
Jose was pragmatic and decided to play for the draw or a possible 1-0. In our next game, he shall set the team up to win.

I was content with the match.
We have so many injuries.
either team could have won it.

Mourinho is doing a great job and the players are doing the best they can. Pity Fellani fell for the provocation.

 

[Kostur]

Were there post-match comments video posted somewhere?

 

[Shimo]

I expected the approach but when we did get the ball we were too careless with it and it was compounded by the fact that asswipe Atkinson was letting them go through our players when we did get the ball to our forward players.

Also not surprising that the hatred for fellaini is streaming out. He has to shoulder some of the blame but that was hands down mostly on Atkinson. He lets them get away with everything and was looking to be center of attention. The cheat Aguerro goes at Fellaini and how he embellishes right in front of him and he took the opportunity to show the world Atkinson is reffing. The FA should have the balls to reverse the call to show cheaters like Aguero that histrionics like his to get players sent off will not be tolerated.

Good point. Just hope Pogba is back soon.

 

[Ali Dia]

First united game I missed watching in a long time because of work. Fellaini will be public enemy number one again just when quite a few people were coming around to him. That was stupid though. He can have no complaints.
It sounds like we dug in and stole a point with 10 men for the last 10 minutes and created very little good football. That will be a vailuble point though. You'd have taken it before the game. Lots of hard games coming up. The hope is to get at least a draw in all of them while trying to nick a few wins. I don't think we are playing well enough to go away from home and rip good teams to shreds though. This team still has to really click in an attacking sense and we've horrific injuries to contend with but you can at least start see the potential in the team. We are dogged again. We will be playing on the counter away from home against our rivals for the most part. It's been our most interesting season for ages ...

 

[Florida Man]

I gave a 10 to Fellaini for this match. And i can explain why. The moment he was red carded and you all jumped on the poor fella ini, he went off unfairly but never succumbed to Aguero antics. He remained true to his man self. I would despise a player doing that sorta antics with my club's shirt. So that's why Fellaini was a true red tonight. A man before a football player. Like the United greats of the past have always been.

Not sure if serious. But if for some reason it is, Fellaini definitely tried to go up to Aguero but got backed away by Bailly.

 

[ChaddyP]

there's couple issues Mourinho had going into this match.

First issue is Blind having to play defence. Due to his lack of pace we have to hold a deeper defensive line. For there not to be gaps of space between midfield and defence for the likes of KDB to exploit the midfield has to also play deeper. This makes defending easier but makes transition to attack harder. This can be helped when you have an amazing midfielder like Pogba who can take on 3 players at once and pick the right pass to find the free players but we didn't have Pogba. We could have also used a wide player coming and helping out the midfield. The best player we have at doing this is Mata. He's also injured. We could have also just booted the ball up to a target man who could have helped hold up the ball and wait for the midfield to arrive. Best person for this is Zlatan. But he's obviously out.

We had to revert to hurried passes to Rashford to try and stretch them. But as Jose said they were quite smart with this and did some very good 'tackles' to thwart the counter. We were generally poor in transitioning from turnovers. Mkhitaryan had a poor game in this regard. Man City pushed their full backs high and made our wide players start even further back if we got the ball back. With the personnel we had missing and the type of opponent we played I think we did as good as we could have expected. Having Blind makes it really difficult to press higher. Jose knows this and in the end it was better to not lose than to be too risky trying to get a win.

Just really hope we can get some players back because we are running really thin in certain areas.

 

[Ibi Dreams]

Wasn't able to watch the game, but I think the most important thing is that we didn't lose. It's obvious how hard Mourinho is working to build our squad up to be mentally strong, and it's working so far. A humiliating loss to City could have been a real blow, but we hung in there and they couldn't beat us. Of course I want us to win every game, but being pragmatic, we have a much better chance of CL through Europa League and at this point in time we were missing our players that usually make the difference.

Could we have attacked them more and won the game? Yes. But equally we could have opened ourselves up too much and lost, which could be quite damaging to the morale and the feeling we have at the moment. I don't doubt that the players are aware of being unbeaten for 25 games or whatever it is and I think it's important to keep that going. Ultimately I don't think it was that important to win this game, but it was important not to lose it.

 

[Nytram Shakes]

i find it weird people still getting surprised that Mourinho sets up his team to be defensive against big teams..... thats what he does.

 

[Obiorahking_]

If anything this highlighted Mourinho's failure to bring in credible back ups to Pogba/Herrera. Swap out Fellaini with any midfielder who can advance the ball and Martial/Rashford are in on goal.

 

[hubbuh]

Concur with the people saying 'we had a feck tonne of injuries, what the hell did you expect?' A loss here would have been no great shakes to us given our great run of form but it was basically a non option for city having been dumped out the FA Cup by Arse t'other day.

A relatively good result all things considered. It also isn't proof that Mourinho resorts to defensive tactics every time he faces top opposition. We literally just beat Chelsea very easily playing an attacking game so either people's memories are more fecked than mine or they're just blindly following the narrative that mourinho is always conservative against top teams. Mourinho is the master of sussing out teams on an individual basis and he did it once again here. A draw was the best thing we could have hoped for and we did that by styfling City for the majority of the game.

I'm content with the performance and the result.

 

[hubbuh]

If anything this highlighted Mourinho's failure to bring in credible back ups to Pogba/Herrera. Swap out Fellaini with any midfielder who can advance the ball and Martial/Rashford are in on goal.

Alternatively, it highlighted his ability to cope without them when facing one of the best teams in the league away from home. There are no credible back ups to Pogba, injuries are a part of the game that every team has to contend with. It's unrealistic to expect a like for like replacement for someone that cost 89£m.

 

[Freak]

i find it weird people still getting surprised that Mourinho sets up his team to be defensive against big teams..... thats what he does.

Like he did against Chelsea right? Because you do know we controlled that game from start to finish.

 

[Nytram Shakes]

Like he did against Chelsea right? Because you do know we controlled that game from start to finish.

yes we did, put it isn't like we had Chelsea pinned back in their own half, we man marked their best attackers out of the game gave them no where to go then took advantage of their high line to get in behind them with a pacey attack. and every time Chelsea brought on an attacking player we brought on a defensive player to neutralise them.

Mourinho strategy has always been the same against the big teams, defence first second and third and if we can also attack then thats a good bonus

 

[11101]

I don't understand why people are so upset by this game. We were without our best striker, midfielder and arguably defender. What did we expect going away from home to our main 4th place rival? It was always going to be a Jose bus parking masterclass. I'd have taken a draw before the game and I'll take it now.

 

[Womp]

I gave a 10 to Fellaini for this match. And i can explain why. The moment he was red carded and you all jumped on the poor fella ini, he went off unfairly but never succumbed to Aguero antics. He remained true to his man self. I would despise a player doing that sorta antics with my club's shirt. So that's why Fellaini was a true red tonight. A man before a football player. Like the United greats of the past have always been.

 

[markhrad]

Good result considering the circumstances. My only hope was that Martial could have had a moment of brilliance like making a solo run into the box and scoring a beauty.
I have to give Mourinho credit for nullifying such a strong attacking force like City's on their homeground.

 

[Obiorahking_]

Alternatively, it highlighted his ability to cope without them when facing one of the best teams in the league away from home. There are no credible back ups to Pogba, injuries are a part of the game that every team has to contend with. It's unrealistic to expect a like for like replacement for someone that cost 89£m.

Its unrealistic to expect to have a midfielder on a bench who can advance the ball forward to the attack? You are fine with a Carrick/Fellaini tandem as back ups? a 35 year old and a guy who can't seem to do the primary job of a midfielder. Injuries are a natural part of the game, but I don't think its too much to expect to have a decent playmaker on the bench.

 

[senorgregster]

Too many pages to look through but I've looked through 1st 2nd and 16th and not a mention of Bailly. Thought he was superb.

 

[peridigm]

Gutted I wasn't able to watch this live. Had to work late which further delayed my viewing. Watch up until Fellaini's red and got pissed off so I fast forwarded to the point I see they scored then shut off the tv. Then I find it was disallowed. Feeling better and calm now.

Seriously though, fecking Fellaini played a decent game until that point. Not a bad result, I predicted a draw, we're still unbeaten. Now we are short for 3 games in MF if Pogba is out for any length of time.

Wouldn't be surprised at all if Martial does not play much and is sold in the summer.

 

[hubbuh]

yes we did, put it isn't like we had Chelsea pinned back in their own half, we man marked their best attackers out of the game gave them no where to go then took advantage of their high line to get in behind them with a pacey attack. and every time Chelsea brought on an attacking player we brought on a defensive player to neutralise them.

Mourinho strategy has always been the same against the big teams, defence first second and third and if we can also attack then thats a good bonus

And it worked to an absolute t. What are you actually complaining about? Are you annoyed about the game plan we used against Chelsea? Some people will never be happy, it seems . Our performance against Chelsea was about as dominant a top side is likely to be against another equally top team.

Also, our game plan against Chelsea wasn't about defence first, second and third and if that's what your memory is telling you a week on I'd seriously consider seeking professional help in regards to your patently fecked memory.

 

[Giggs86]

Feel sorry for Felliani, first was a booking fair enough, Aguero dived for the second and the way he went down after that "headbutt" was embarrassing.

Can you blame him though? Fellaini was dumb enough to take the bait. Even the slightest headbutt is a clear red. Unless you're a City player headbutting Oliver of course.