[kerano.]

Pogba is NOT a defensive mid!!! Jesus! Mourinho stop playing him out of position!

 

[Valencia's Left Foot]

As good as Sánchez is , he was an incredibly redundant purchase...we still have no one to play on the right, mata too damn slow and the switch to the right appears to have screwed up martial who was in great for on the left. We have to bring in someone on the right this summer.

 

[bosnian_red]

It's a shambles as Lukaku had a very good game today. Again he got no service but did excellently with what he got. He also 24 years old.

Totally the wrong time to try and force your opinions about him on people as it makes your view of the game look stupid in my opinion.

I say the same shit about him every game. He can play well individually but he'll never be the answer. Far from the biggest problem obviously, but it is a problem considering the amount we spent on him, and his age. Might be young but you don't improve your overall game to the extent he'll need to.

I said it before. Look at the strikers we've had under Fergie. He's not a patch on any of the main one's. His quality is more in line with the fill in players until we settled on a main striker.

 

[Jim Beam]

Never thought I would say this, but I almost hope Pogba has a minor injury problem because that performance was absolutely dreadful. Playing in midfield 2 or not, there is no excuse for the lack of effort. Not sure what Smalling was doing, but it wasn't defending for sure.

How on earth you leave a player unmarked and unchallenged for the header on the edge of the box for their goal?

We had chances, we deserved a goal, probably a draw, but Newcastle is such a poor team that you will always get chances against them. Really bad performance from the whole team, apart from Lukaku who was great and Sanchez although he had to bury that chance when it was still 0-0 and it changes everything.

 

[Catt]

Not surprised. Some of these players are comfortable and happy as long as things are easy. As soon as somebody picks their nose they crumble.

I have every reason to be negative

 

[edgar allan]

If we had taken our chances we would have won easily. Sanchez and Martial had very good chances.

Lingarrd was poor and Pogba could have been better.

One mistake can have huge consequences and in this case smalling diving turned out to be huge.

Lack of intensity against these poorer teams really pisses me off. Away from home is always the same. It is always tough. If this were city, they would absolutely dominate Newcastle.

That is one serious sympathetic view of Pogba's contribution.
Lingard was very poor but he put some effort into the game unlike Pogba who put in next to none.

 

[Esquire]

I think Pogba was the weak link today. Having a key attacker play so poorly seemed to destabilise everyone else.

Not sure why he's like this. Unfit? Injured? Bit of both? Or just immaturity?

Did you see when they cut to him sitting on the bench after getting subbed? His head was tilted back, face pale and all. Was he sick or something? He didn’t even look like he even had the physical strength to get into the match today.

 

[Icemav]

No great fan of Lukaku but today is not the day to put the boot into him. He was our best player today.
We have huge problems in defence and midfield, he was the least of our problems.

Agree. We have no midfield. We have a defense who cant play the ball out, Smalling utterly abject, and no support because again - we have no midfield. And currently we do not seem to have a manager. Because he cant see that we have no midfield and that we are gettimg pressed into oblivion with Smalling at the back. Doesnt want to play Pogba in a 3, and happy to either watch us get overrun in a 2 and then haul Pogba off or drop him. I am not a Pogba defender because he is beiing gutless and utterly immature at the moment..... but Jose is managing terribly. Pogba will hand in a transfer notice if Jose keeps this sort of shite up. Some might say fine and that he has no heart.... which may be true but Jose is just setting him and the team up to fail at the moment. If he didnt forsee these midfield problems then he is the problem. A tactical pygmie since November.

We are in damage control for the time being. Great timing with the new contract.

 

[Pscholes18]

Pool already scored...they'll be two points behind us after today.

 

[Mozza]

Mouriniho has got to go

 

[Dosse]

It was a terrible game but sack the manager? Everything taken into account the solution is to sack him? Wow, just wow xD

 

[TheReligion]

I say the same shit about him every game. He can play well individually but he'll never be the answer. Far from the biggest problem obviously, but it is a problem considering the amount we spent on him, and his age. Might be young but you don't improve your overall game to the extent he'll need to.

I said it before. Look at the strikers we've had under Fergie. He's not a patch on any of the main one's. His quality is more in line with the fill in players until we settled on a main striker.

Who are you comparing him to then?

Peak Solskjaer, van Nistelrooy, Cole, Yorke?

Unfair if so as he's still got 19 goals this season and is alot younger.

 

[promisedlanchiao]

and before jose complains about the lack of atmosphere at OT, maybe he needs to have a word with the squad about giving more on the pitch. i mean how is anyone expected to identify with and embrace this bunch of over paid, big headed, dancing, dabbing clowns?

 

[AshRK]

Yeah maybe we aren't but Lukaku isn't good enough to build around anyway. That's the issue. He's a limited striker who will forever limit our play as long as he's here.

Lukaku must improve his finishing but he was not the problem today. The fact that none of our back 4 can pass the ball forward is a major issue. People hated lindelof but he is far better with the ball than Jones or smalling. Young I have always maintained is massively overrated by our manager and some fans. He is a true definition of mediocrity. And the fact that we bring a 36 year old Carrick to save the match shows how much work is still required to reach the pinnacle.

 

[GM K]

We should let Sanchez leave. Poor fecker probably already regrets coming here. The standard of some of our players on the basics of the game is an absolute embarrassment. Jones and Smalling in particular were a disgrace today.

Finally, somebody hits the nail on the head.

This is why I hardly buy the 'formation is our problem' line lately.

Let's talk formation when I see our players play with heart and do the basics of football right for 90 minutes of a game.

 

[edgar allan]

Agree. We have no midfield. We have a defense who cant play the ball out, Smalling utterly abject, and no support because again - we have no midfield. And currently we do not seem to have a manager. Because he cant see that we have no midfield and that we are gettimg pressed into oblivion with Smalling at the back. Doesnt want to play Pogba in a 3, and happy to either watch us get overrun in a 2 and then haul Pogba off or drop him. I am not a Pogba defender because he is beiing gutless and utterly immature at the moment..... but Jose is managing terribly. Pogba will hand in a transfer notice if Jose keeps this sort of shite up. Some might say fine and that he has no heart.... which may be true but Jose is just setting him and the team up to fail at the moment. If he didnt forsee these midfield problems then he is the problem. A tactical pygmie since November.

We are in damage control for the time being. Great timing with the new contract.

All fair points. I would have no sadness if either Jose or Pogba were to leave.
Both incredibly overrated in their own ways.

 

[Brigred]

Mouriniho has got to go

Got admit losing faith in him now

 

[IRELANDUNITED]

It's an historic day for Newcastle and I'm sure they won't think about this at the moment but wouldn't they be frustrated that they don't play like that every weekend? They were like men possessed today. If I were a NC fan i'd be asking myself why they on earth can they only do it when the biggest ticket comes to town.

 

[Salus Populi Suprema Lex]

Pool already scored...they'll be two points behind us after today.

We're in a real fight for top four. It's unacceptable.

 

[AshRK]

Mouriniho has got to go

And replace by who. Jose must improve our attacking play but letting him go will not solve major issues. However Jose must be ruthless this summer and ship off mediocre players and stop begging likes of fellaini to stay and save his career here. If he does that next season too then time will be ticking on him.

 

[Jim Beam]

Lukaku is frustrating to watch. Pep prefer Jesus and Aguero and Jose prefer Costa and Lukaku. I guess we won't be winning the EPL as long as Pep is around. Martial should either be on the bench to left. Sanchez should either be left or centre. I don't know why Jose is not utilizing the players at his disposal. I also mentioned that we should be Moura, 25mil is nothing to Man Utd when you have 90mil striker who underperforming.

Lukaku had a great game. This bashing of him started going by default on here.

 

[Pacificgi]

The 4231 just doesnt seem to work. It grates that weve put martial on the right to accomodate sanchez. Martial did okay considering its not his position.

Apparently this formation/line up shouldve been enough to beat newcastle as theyre not as good as spurs. Bottom line is if youre going to play a dysfunctional 11 just to fit in your top players its not going to work.

Im not going to lay critism at smalling as im sure there will be plenty of people being unfairly critical of him.

We need to go back to 433 - it feels as if jose is playing this formation to say 'ive played all my attacking players like you all want and heres what happens' . The midfield set up just isnt like jose when you compare how hes set up his previous teams

 

[Verminator]

I'm normally pretty level-headed after the game, but I don't think people are overreacting in this case.
Our players seem to have very little pride or character.
Alexis seems to have created more problems in our fluidity, as players are shunted around.

Under Fergie we didn't usually lose because of lack of effort or steel. The ethos was "Earn the right to play, by matching or bettering the oppositions' intensity."
Some of our players have the effort and intensity of a stoner with flu.

Lukaku did well, but when are we going to see a team performance?

 

[Full bodied red]

It's not the quality of our players that's the problem, it's their mentality. There's no fight in this team.

I think we've only won one of the ;ast 20 matches when we conceded first....Or something like that....

Which says everything about the this team and players.

 

[Romez]

Today was a perfect example of us not being able to play out from the back. After about 10/15 minutes Newcastle pressed our backline (i'm surprised more teams don't do this) as it's clear we can't handle it, which result in us passing back to De Gea or lumping it forward.

It's not just our CB's, it's the full backs standing parallel to the CB's not giving them a good option. It's the midfield dropping deep to get the ball off the CB's. It's the forward players (like Lukaku) either standing right on the opposition defenders or the wide players standing on the touchline. Then to top it off our CB's don't have the confidence to pass into feet to the players higher up the pitch.

It's just a total mess which stems from the lack of movement.

 

[Mozza]

And replace by who. Jose must improve our attacking play but letting him go will not solve major issues. However Jose must be ruthless this summer and ship off mediocre players and stop begging likes of fellaini to stay and save his career here. If he does that next season too then time will be ticking on him.

Forget the attacking play, for a manger who's negative the defence is shambolic

 

[VeevaVee]

We just have one gear, and it's not a very high one. We seem to just out with the idea that we can match the opposition's intensity and hopefully grab a goal. We should be setting the pace.

 

[The Firestarter]

Did you see when they cut to him sitting on the bench after getting subbed? His head was tilted back, face pale and all. Was he sick or something? He didn’t even look like he even had the physical strength to get into the match today.

Yeah that was almost disturbing, like he has been in a car crash.

 

[DomesticTadpole]

Lukaku had a great game. This bashing of him started going by default on here.

He wasn't bad today, but to be honest the fact he was doing the providing shows he might have lost confidence as a finisher himself. He has serious limitations which everybody knew yet we still bought him and I now agree Morata was not the answer either.

 

[Houdini]

1. De Gea - not his fault
2. Jones and Smallig - Lauer and Hardy minus I am not laughing.
3. Valencia - He is always trying and works hard, not his fault
4. Young - he tried at least, few good moments
5. Matic - fatigued?
6. Pogba - injured, on drugs or lack of motivation? (maybe mix of all) He looked like he just dont care or he is afraid of something
7. Lingard - played out of position and maybe out of the pitch too
8. Mata - Slow but one of the few who has brain and can use it.
9. Martial - now we know why he is not working as sniper in S.W.A.T. team (I hope he just had one of those days)
10. Sanches - our most talented player, good workrate, shame for that Torres in Chelsea moment
11. Lukaku - our best player today (however that was not a hard to do achievement). He was also the second who used brain
12. Mourinho - negative tactics (as usually), he should realize not every team is Xavis era Barcelona
13. Carrick - hard to turn a match as a sub DM
14. McT -not better than Matic

 

[mk7]

super frustrating to watch. Midfield 3 (regardless who plays) should be a given. This could also sort out our depressing build up play. With these attacking options, you do not need a #10 to spark creativity.

We desperately need to buy a proper right back who dares to use his "weaker" foot. It is agonizing to watch since everyone down to League 2 knows how to shut down Valencia.

Worst player for me today was definitely Pogba. By a mile.

 

[Cee90]

Shelvey was class.

They simply wanted it more than us and played with the determination and passion that we should of done.

 

[VeevaVee]

Forget the attacking play, for a manger who's negative the defence is shambolic

And it has been for a long time, but people have been blinded by clean sheet stats and said we have the best defence in the PL. The reason for those is that we're just generally a better team so don't have to face that many attacks (plus De Gea). So often we struggle to pull around an opposition defence then are attacked once and ours is all over the show though.

 

[Sandikan]

Lukaku had a great game. This bashing of him started going by default on here.

If that was a great game, I fear the benchmark is pretty low.
Did he even get a shot on target off?

A few nice moves and passes, but hardly great to any extent.

 

[gerdm07]

Jon Jo Shelvey is such a smart player.
Does Martial ever sweat?
It was nice to see Carrick back even though he was not sharp.

It's going to be a real fight for 4th.

 

[Icemav]

I'm normally pretty level-headed after the game, but I don't think people are overreacting in this case.
Our players seem to have very little pride or character.
Alexis seems to have created more problems in our fluidity, as players are shunted around.

Under Fergie we didn't usually lose because of lack of effort or steel. The ethos was "Earn the right to play, by matching or bettering the oppositions' intensity."
Some of our players have the effort and intensity of a stoner with flu.

Lukaku did well, but when are we going to see a team performance?

I thought Sanchez was supposed to be a replacement for Miki as a pseudo RW/10? Now we have Martial out of position and Rashford not getting a game. Total flustercluck from the special one. But that is just the attack which is the least of his failings atm.

 

[vangagal]

That miss from Martial and Sanchez proved costly today. But whats new about United wasting chances? And when we are wasted up front, our backline managed to feck up aswell. That was minimal margin today between success and failure and it happen almost often this season. We just need to cut stupid mistake from the back and more tidy on attack. I dont mind winning by small margin but losing 1-0 is such a painfull one.

Jones-Smalling never worked. They always had those LOL moment every match and we cant pass from the back because teams would press Smalling immediately. And Jose need more aggresive tactic in away games . More often than not we are to cautious to attack because it would open the space between mid and defence. Jose should just play 433 because it suit more his preference in away games mentality.

 

[Jagga7]

This has been a typical performance for us this season but today we didn't get the result. We had the chances but had a poor performance in front of goal today.

We still have a 6 point gap from Chelsea. We must secure top 4 this season.

 

[DomesticTadpole]

Yeah that was almost disturbing, like he has been in a car crash.

If he was injured and had to run around for all that time, he might have been in a lot of pain, or it might not have been an injury but illness and he was persuaded to play.

 

[VeevaVee]

Struggling to pick a MOTM here because they were all shite.

 

[bosnian_red]

Who are you comparing him to then?

Peak Solskjaer, van Nistelrooy, Cole, Yorke?

Unfair if so as he's still got 19 goals this season and is alot younger.

Not all about the goals. But yes. Soslkjaer, Cantona, Hughes, Cole, Yorke, Rooney, Van Nistelrooy, Van Perie. Even Tevez, though his stay was limited. Throughout the entirety of Sir Alex's reign here, he always had a world class striker up top who was a complete player who could score goals but also create and influence play. That's what we need. The brief periods where we didn't have a striker like that, we were using players like Welbeck, berba, hernandez, sheringham, saha, forlan, etc.. Squad players or people filling in. I'd say Lukaku is a lot closer to that group, then the main group. And that's another point I was making earlier. He has a huge reputation because of the price we paid to get him from Everton, but if he was someone we bought for 20million 5 years ago and he developed into what he is now, he probably would be seen purely as a squad player. Not a guaranteed starter.

Lukaku can score goals, sure, but he'll never influence play as much as those or to the same extent. I admire his effort and attitude as that's not the issue, it's just his general ability. Don't think it's good enough and yes he might be younger, but that can't improve that much. Also he did have a pretty good game today, but there were still lots of parts to his game missing. Decent performance, nothing more, but that's what you get from Lukaku. This and then you hope he scores goals. You want more then that from your main striker. Especially in the big games where he fails time after time.