[ayushreddevil9]

Any volunteers for a bit of backside kicking. Think there will be a long queue. How dare we drag them out on a cold snowy Saturday night to their jobs.

My question - kick who? ETH or Martial?

 

[DomesticTadpole]

I've seen Bruno and Hojlund press countless times to no avail. Its easy coming out as fans and saying the players are lazy. But I can't believe for a second that United's players simply have a lower motor than other squads in Europe, as this has been a constant all season long. For me, I see a group of players chasing shadows having to carry the instructions of a manager who doesn't seem to know how to deliver them and is experimenting with an attacking plan and defensive structure he doesn't actually know how to carry out.

His system is failing and he knows it. Yet he's going out there telling our players to get the ball back to Onana too boot it forward. It's quite clear he doesn't know how to play direct football. We've been trying to completely bypass the midfield since the Sheffield United game, we've won games, but its been terrible.

They don't know how to press that is the issue, it is a skill that the good teams have had drilled into them. There are patterns to it, who presses and when. That is either down to coaching or some players not listening or understanding what it involves.

 

[DomesticTadpole]

My question - kick who? ETH or Martial?

At the moment Martial. Rashford next in line.

 

[Alemar]

That was a proper dogshit performance once again. Terrible really - I was among the minority of those who expected us to get something out of this match, but damn…

Martial and Rashford fully deserve a rating of 2/10 (in my book, 1/10 requires an own goal or a red as well, so it’s more of a 2).

McTominay, Dalot and Bissaka were just shit, a proper 3/10 performance.

Onana, Garnacho and Bruno maybe a 5 each.

Mainoo and Maguire I would think deserve a 6, with Shaw a 7 and MotM.

 

[Ady87]

Liverpool are going to maul us. I’d take 3-0 right now.

 

[Hughie77]

Rubbish... Awful and where are the solutions to this???.. just go away from home and get beat ..unless your playing bottom half teams.. scum away that's going to be great..

 

[always_hoping]

First half

Shots on goal
Newcastle 14
Man United 2

Shots on target
Newcastle 2
Man United 1

Passes
Newcastle 301
Man United 204

2nd half

Shots on goal
Newcastle 8
Man United 6

Shots on target
Newcastle 2
Man United 0

Passes
Newcastle 218
Man United 161

 

[Dr. T]

First half

Shots on goal
Newcastle 14
Man United 2

Shots on target
Newcastle 2
Man United 1

Passes
Newcastle 301
Man United 204

2nd half

Shots on goal
Newcastle 8
Man United 6

Shots on target
Newcastle 2
Man United 0

Passes
Newcastle 218
Man United 161

Lies, damned lies and statistics!

 

[elmo]

I've seen Bruno and Hojlund press countless times to no avail. Its easy coming out as fans and saying the players are lazy. But I can't believe for a second that United's players simply have a lower motor than other squads in Europe, as this has been a constant all season long. For me, I see a group of players chasing shadows having to carry the instructions of a manager who doesn't seem to know how to deliver them and is experimenting with an attacking plan and defensive structure he doesn't actually know how to carry out.

His system is failing and he knows it. Yet he's going out there telling our players to get the ball back to Onana too boot it forward. It's quite clear he doesn't know how to play direct football. We've been trying to completely bypass the midfield since the Sheffield United game, we've won games, but its been terrible.

it’s been a thing since under Jose. Stop being delusional and actually watch, you’ll realise the petulance from some of our players, especially Rashford who starts his interpretation of being a statue within the first 10 mins of every game.

ETH has his problems, but Rashford not doing anything on the pitch without the ball is a constant even before he got here.

Scott’s not a football player, he’s a professional hider. It’s disgraceful that subs can have more passes than him playing the full 90.

 

[groovyalbert]

The same question was asked when ole finished 2nd, we bought Sancho, Ronaldo and Varane, and things fell apart

It does sort of point in favour of the argument that our recent decent seasons have been as much down to others dropping off if I'm honest.

 

[redmanx]

My question - kick who? ETH or Martial?

By the time kicks are administered to everybody at Old Trafford who deserves a kick you'll have worn your foot down to the knee!

 

[TheGodsInRed]

Probably worst game of the season. Newcastle didn't even look like they had much quality but just tried harder and seemed to win every 50/50.

 

[El-Manos]

Shaw was at fault for the goal, not sure why people are saying he had a good game.

 

[sunama]

Rubbish... Awful and where are the solutions to this???.. just go away from home and get beat ..unless your playing bottom half teams.. scum away that's going to be great..

That sums it up.
If we play teams in the bottom half, we do well.
The moment we come up against half decent opposition, we get hammered.

 

[patch1]

Words cannot do justice to how bad this side is.To call them a team,does injustice to the word.

 

[Gopher Brown]

I hate that I had no hope and zero expectation before the game. How have Newcastle leapfrogged us with a team which was assembled for a fraction of ours, despite all their money? The gulf in quality was huge. I've said it before, then changed my mind, but the manager needs to seriously consider what he's doing here.

 

[mitchmouse]

thanks lads, too me more than two hours to get to sleep because I was still fuming at the gutless performance

 

[Hughie77]

thanks lads, too me more than two hours to get to sleep because I was still fuming at the gutless performance

I got pissed .. otherwise I'd have not gone to sleep either.. it was a hopeless display..

 

[greater wall]

That was a proper dogshit performance once again. Terrible really - I was among the minority of those who expected us to get something out of this match, but damn…

Martial and Rashford fully deserve a rating of 2/10 (in my book, 1/10 requires an own goal or a red as well, so it’s more of a 2).

McTominay, Dalot and Bissaka were just shit, a proper 3/10 performance.

Onana, Garnacho and Bruno maybe a 5 each.

Mainoo and Maguire I would think deserve a 6, with Shaw a 7 and MotM.

Dalot and Bissaka were overloaded with the two Newcastle fullbacks. It needed Garnacho and Rashford really working overtime. Rashford really disappointed in that respect. Shaw's loose pass led to the goal. I thought Maguire gave everything on the pitch. Top respect to him.

 

[Maticmaker]

Only a 1-0 loss but an inglorious defeat nevertheless.

Most of our players failed to show up with the exception of Harry McGuire and Luke Shaw. Together with Onana, who stood up to be counted especially at corner kicks, these few should be the only ones 'mentioned in dispatches' and the only ones to get paid for the Saturday night shift.

Lets face it it was no 'battle'. We never really got out of the starting blocks, the early chance (and as it turned out was our only chance) from Garnacho, showed that despite some recent sparkling efforts, on straight run-in's on goal he is still lacking some maturity in his decision-making.

Given the overall performance was bordering on 'surrender psychosis', the major mystery for me was why when the world and his wife could see Rashford and Martial were not putting in even half a shift, and having not replaced them at HT, ETH waits until Newcastle take the lead before getting them off the pitch?
Surely it was clear, having not lost (but in fact having never gained) the initiative and with our two centre backs putting in 'last man standing' defensive displays and the keeper resisting all attempts by the crowd to upset him, that a point was all we were likely to get, why wait until we go behind before making the substitutions?

It was certainly a very bad day at the office, except for those mentioned above, who were the only ones to display 'true-grit', and deserved the ride home on the coach, train, plane, whatever!

 

[HookedOnAPhelan]

DownTools Abbey FC

 

[Kopral Jono]

For the first time in maybe four years plus I missed last night game and judging from all accounts I didn't miss a single minute of it. In fact I should give our games a miss more often from now on.

 

[tjb]

it’s been a thing since under Jose. Stop being delusional and actually watch, you’ll realise the petulance from some of our players, especially Rashford who starts his interpretation of being a statue within the first 10 mins of every game.

ETH has his problems, but Rashford not doing anything on the pitch without the ball is a constant even before he got here.

Scott’s not a football player, he’s a professional hider. It’s disgraceful that subs can have more passes than him playing the full 90.

I saw us press earlier in the season. I saw us change our style after Sheffield United. I'm not quite sure why I'm delusional when its quite clear that Ten Haag is failing tactically. If the press isn't working, why aren't we asking him why its not, as that is actually part of the things he needs to coach, instead of summarily blaming players and absolving the manager of his actual job. If a coach can't be critcized for what we see on the pitch, exactly what are we supposed to say he does? Cause I watch other teams play football too. I don't think other teams play 100% at full effort every game. I've seen aging strikers at big teams and they still are able to get control of the football and work well off the ball.

It's also weird to say its been a thing since Jose when we've had so many new players signed since Jose. We have almost a full xi of players signed since then. Yes, they didn't play yesterday, but even with them on the pitch its the same issue. So again, I don't believe at United where we have spent so much on players, a manager can have an excuse that its "the players" when teams with far less resources are able to perform.

This notion of downing tools is always implied to absolve a manager from his responsibilities when in actuality his gameplan simply failed on the pitch. Fitness is part of coaching. Tactical plans that make it easy to play and receive the ball is part of coaching. Tactical plans that make it easy to press and get back the ball is part of coaching; and our players have not been supported in terms of shape and positioning to have success from the beginning of the season. As usual, as far as fans are concerned, they should suffer with a failed tactical plan because the manager knows what he's doing. When in reality, this season, the manager has shown no indication of actually knowing what he's doing. He ha been playing direct and purposely bypassing midfield without having a target striker or or a narrow shape to hold onto possession. Yet Martial ( who I agree is lazy normally) is expected to hold up exceptionally, when he's being tasked to do this against a physical newcastle team on his own like he's Drogba. It's not like we're playing a 442 either. We're also pressing to no avail because the pressing shape hasn't been working for the last few weeks. Again, blame the coach. It is actually his fault that 2 years into his management, a few injuries can completely wreck how he imagined we would play, despite the fact that outside a 2 month spell, we've never actually played good football. I think its actually defeatist to blame each player when its quite clear the WHOLE team hasn't been great all season. Rashford isn't playing poorly in a silo. This is a guy who scored 30 goals for us last season where we had less that 60 league goals in total. As a club, we should completely abandon him apparently, and support a manager that hasn't shown any signs of success in his two years, who has made it seem like he needs 2011 Barca in order to play any form of good football. Let's also put things into perspective, Rashford scoring 30 goals last season came largely from individual brilliance from himself and Bruno which can be difficult to replicate in a team that doesn't give forwards the opportunities to attack much in a game. Swap Rashford for Saka and I think we would be saying the same things. Bring in Foden and Bernardo Silva and I can bet in two months of their arrival, both would be on the bench like Mount and we'd be questioning their work ethic and whether they feel too good to press as they've won everything.

I'd go as far as saying, as a top player, United would be the most annoying club in the world to play for. Despite clear tactical issues preventing the team from playing well in big games, Bruno, Casemiro, Varane, Licha, Shaw, Di Maria, Pogba, Rashford, Ibrahimovic, Lukaku etc are always scapegoated. These players actually show their quality in adverse situations with poor tactics and poor recruitment, yet each and everytime things don't go well, particularly as a result of team failure, the blame in terms of leadership and attacking play is laid at their feet like their supposed to dribble through the whole team. We've had more players come to the club than managers. We also say that for most of the ten years, individual brilliance has carried us. Yet we can't seem to admit, even after failures after working for us, that the managers are actually responsible for how poor the team is. This is why we were right NOT to sign Kane. He would have made no difference to this side and would have been scapegoated as the reason we don't press well. Varane is literally languishing on the bench because of angles. Some fans are saying we can't play a high line due to Maguire, but the manager is choosing to use him despite seemingly knowing this.

 

[always_hoping]

So the damage after this weekend.

Nine points off 1st place
Seven points off 2nd place
Six points off 3rd place
Five points off 4th place

Three and two points behind Tottenham and Newcastle in 5th and 6th.

 

[Fahad Jawaid]

That was an awful performance. But I have come to terms with our ability and expect very little tbh. There are three types of problems we are facing, number one is the manager acting tactically clueless and poor selection such as:

1) Using Shaw as CB thus making Dalot play as LB where he was so uncomfortable that he almost cleared into his hand and was lucky not to concede the pen. Easier option was to just play Varane and play Shaw as LB or play Reguilon instead of Dalot.

2) Playing Mctominay and continued to keep him on despite him being brutally exposed by Joelinton. Easier option was to play Amrabat alongside Mainoo and not let him hung out to dry also allowing us to be solid in the middle.

Second problem is the lack of quality in the team, In terms of man to man against Newcastle even against their depleted side, I would have honestly taken Pope (Onana), Trippier (AWB), Livamento (Dalot), Laschelles (Shaw as CB), Joelinton (Mctominay), Guimares (Bruno), Almiron (Garnacho), Isak (Martial). In fact even Gordon on the current form in far more effective than Rashford. The only two players I would not replace is Mainoo and Maguire.

This is sadly the state of our team where man to man I strongly believe they just had a side which has far more quality than we do (similar to Arsenal, City, Pool, Spurs and even Chelsea), plus they just had physically stronger players which dominated our side, I think we may have the weakest side in the league, the likes of Martial, Rashford, Garnacho, Lindelof, Bruno, Antony, Mount and Eriksen they are all players who are easily outmuscled and overpowered, which results in us being second to everything.

This leads to the third issue which is recruitment, why did we allow ourselves to be in the position where quality wise we are not as good as our competitors, why did we waste money on subpar players like Mount, Antony etc.

Lastly, how could we end up with players who are all physically weak, somebody during our recruitment must have pointed out that half of our 15 man squad looks like 18 year old boys, how can you compete against teams which not only technically and player wise are superior to us plus also physically better than us as well, which results in performances and humiliations like yesterday.

 

[justsomebloke]

Some takeaways from the fbref match report;

Horrific balance of chance creation. Not just the xG (2.4 vs 0.5) but also the shots underline how one-sided the game was in terms of chance creation. United had two early opportunities (Garnacho at 11 mins, 0.1 xG and Wan-Bissaka in the 13th, 0.03 xG). The next 18 shot attempts were Newcastle, before Maguire got our next in the 63rd minute (0.03 xG, header off target). All of our remaining 5 shot attempts was from the 82nd minutes and out, with Antony's blocked shot by far the best chance (0.2 xG).

Bruno carried the load. It's not often you see an attacker dominate the stats to this extent, which was also clearly visible during the game, first half especially. Second in touches (which usually is dominated by defenders), with 60. Most touches (16) in the opposing 1/3, but none in the PA (but then the whole team had only 12, against 39 for Newcastle). Most completed passes (42), again a category normally dominated by defenders. 13 progressive passes, which is more than half of the team total, 10 more than anyone else on United, and also more than any Newcastle player. Interestingly, a team-best 37 carries, of which only 1 was progressive. 4 take-on attempts, split lead with Garnacho. 6 passes into the opposing 1/3, 3 more than anyone else on United. Made our only two passes into the opposing box. Led the team in recovery of loose balls (9).

Another good one for Mainoo, again as told by eye test - but also indicative of how focused his game is on moving the ball through passing. 3rd in completed passes, best completion % (92.1%). 4 clearances (tied for 3rd). 43 touches (tied for 6th). All of which needs bearing in mind that he was substituted, which takes his numbers down compared to those who weren't.

On the other hand, no tackles, no blocks, no interceptions, no take-ons, no progressive carries, lost both his aerial duels.

Just how poor were Rashford and Martial?

- 0 shots,
- 21 and 17 touches, which is not only 10th and 11th on United, but also less than half that of any Newcastle outfield player.
- 0 tackles, interceptions or blocks
- 0.0 xG, xA or xAG
- 0 shot-creating actions
- 0 progressive passes, or into the opposing PA, or into the attacking 1/3
- 0 key passes
- 0 touches in the opposing penalty area
- 2 progressive carries for Martial, 0 for Rashford
- 2 takes-ons for Rashford (1 successful), 1 failed for Martial.
- Passes completed; 11 and 9, 10th and 11th best on United and again less than half that of any Newcastle outfield player.
- Pass completion; 61.1% for Rashford (second-worst on team), 69.2% for Martial (8th)
- 8 and 5 touches respectively in the attacking 1/3, which is tied for 5th and 10th respectively on United. The only Newcastle player with fewer is Lascelles.
- Progressive passes received: 2 and 1. Garnacho received 7.

 

[bosskeano]

Scathing attack by Shearer in the papers today talking about the bad attitudes that you can see from some of the players....really had a proper go at Martial and Rashford who looked like neither gave an absolute shit to be out there

scholes blasted bruno for being undisciplined and just running around everywhere instead of helping keep the middle compact and defend properly

I know EtH is getting blasted for certain things, and rightfully so, however when your senior top players are the ones who are the most glaring problems what can he do other than drop them to the bench?