[Tigersam]

I am incredibly disappointed by this performance. The first half was ok, not great but ok, we had good intentions, the ball got around, I was satisfied. The problem was that not everybody had a good half. Antony was invisible, Ronaldo‘s career should be over at this level and Fred was abysmal.
The second half however, holy crap that was terrible.
For some reason our best players Eriksen who,is the only one who can accurately and with pace kick a forward pass was taken off and not Fred.
Not surprisingly this terrible decision resulted into utd losing possession. Sociedad’s press also seemed enough to disrupt every movement with the ball we had.
I agreed with Bruno’s sub but not for Eriksen.
Individually Martinez played a terrific game, I’m not even blaming him the pentaly because in my eyes that was never a penalty.
All the others in attack and midfield were simply horrendous.
I want to highlight Sancho’s sub. It was completely pointless, a 90 million wide player who repeatedly not manages to dribble his direct opponent, today he even decided to hide, he was a ghost.

I did not expect this performance at all…

The thing is, Sancho seems to lack pace (and stamina) for a young fella and that ain't going to improve is it? Furthermore, he is on £350,000 a week so no doubt Marcus Rashford, off the back of a couple of good games, will be campaigning for parity (currently he is on 50k less, I believe). He will probably get it knowing MUFC and then revert to his usual standard and all of a sudden you have 2* young forwards over-paid and underperforming and so it continues.

*Does he who shall not be named still get paid until the court case is done and dusted? I assume so.

Ronaldo was terrible last season the majority of the time. Turned in the odd genuinely good performance (Spurs at home) but primarily the tap-ins masked the horrible performances and his effect on dragging the whole team down.

My post history will tell you im far from a Rashford fan but you've got to have legs upfront or a presence of some kind. Ronaldo is done and we shouldnt continue to humour him.

Ronaldo has seen off a manager, an interim manager and if ETH continues to play him, a second manager too. He is on £380k a week and apparently complained that his wages took a hit of 15% in the summer, it is almost unbelievable. Who recruited him, OGS or the Glazers?

Actually felt the majority played like they felt it shouldn't be played.

No atmosphere, bad decision and a really muted affair.

To be fair on 11th September 2001 I think there was a Liverpool match in Europe and when that kicked off the casualties were unknown and some were predicting 50,000+. I think when the fans are at the ground and the players are ready it is safer to play than not - you know a sudden cancellation leading to a rush to exits causing a crush or something. BT Sport were respectful, from what I have heard.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Shit performance but it wasn't a very important game tbf.

Ronaldo again looking like he needs to retire. Maguire didn't really do anything wrong but the difference in passing quality between him and Martinez is night and day. Lindelof/Dalot/malacia were pretty good, can't be blamed. Eriksen did well in the first half. Casemiro was pretty meh, expect him to improve massively of course. Things didn't come off for Antony but I like his work rate. Elenga is pretty shit. Fred was shit.

All in all, wasn't really an important game and the players played as if it wasn't an important game. Still, if we had a better striker who could at least run or control a ball then we would have won without too many issues. Ronaldo killed pretty much every action as he tends to these days.

That’s incredibly unfair on Elanga, who matched Antony’s workrate and - unlike him - regularly got the better of his man.

 

[GL21]

I actually cannot stand fred now in the slightest but even by them standards, wow. Absolutely stealing a living

 

[André Dominguez]

We rotated a lot, so the team looked disjointed as expected due to lack of match pratice.

 

[Irwin99]

Disappointing result in a competition that I hope we will take seriously.

 

[A-man]

Don’t understand the graph in the bottom left corner. Do you? Or anybody else?

 

[wolvored]

Forget the dubious pen, we should be tanking these teams. Shows outside the team that played Sun we have no strength in depth. Ronaldo finished now. Worse game I have saw him play.

 

[wolvored]

Don’t understand the graph in the bottom left corner. Do you? Or anybody else?

Is yellow forward passes and blue backward passes.

 

[bucky]

Don’t understand the graph in the bottom left corner. Do you? Or anybody else?

https://theathletic.com/2751525/202...ted-threat-or-xt-the-new-metric-on-the-block/

https://karun.in/blog/expected-threat.html

https://soccermatics.medium.com/explaining-expected-threat-cbc775d97935

Explanation for xThreat

 

[DLE]

Queen died. We lost.

 

[NewGlory]

McT has steadily improved and was legitimately good against Arsenal. We can cut some of the players who haven't started a bit of slack, but Fred looks awful.

We also desperately need a keeper who can make those medium passes to the fullbacks when playing out from the back. Every time we pressed their keeper just kicked it to their fullbacks on the touchline and they were able to keep more possession because of it. De Gea just hoofs it long if there's even a hint of a press, so we have to fight to get the ball back a lot of the time.

Yeah I am not sure why Dubravka didn't start. This game looked like a perfect opportunity to give him a chance and show us if he can do better

 

[Boondog]

Antony isn't fully integrated yet with the others and you can feel it. Also Sociedad rotated help to him immediately on the edge defensively so they were determined to limit him.

Didn't like the call but not gonna whine about it like an Arse fan. We should have been able to overcome that.

Disappointed by Ronaldo's performance. He looked slow and ineffective. And being offsides sigh. That was the difference.

Clearly this is not a team that can be outworked and cruise to a win. When the teams came out of the tunnel I noticed Sociedad was ready to play, not even in warmup gear. They played a fantastic game as a team and outhustled our side to a lot of balls and touches. I think this should have been a draw or narrow victory for us but these guys getting a loss isn't the worst thing. Maybe it'll be good for them.

 

[Frank Grimes]

You start your best cb and your best attacking threat. Martinez and Bruno should have started.

 

[Bastian]

Watched most of it. Thought we lacked a cutting edge, and think Sociedad are nothing special. Lindelof struggled to contain his man at full back and we looked too slow in transition and in our passing in general.

Win massively flatters them though. Two teams offering equal amounts of nothing.

 

[caid]

Interesting choices for full back rotation i thought. Is shaw injured?

 

[Dec9003]

It was a match where we clearly wanted to give minutes to players that hadn’t had many. We shouldn’t have lost because it wasn’t a penalty, but given the changes we didn’t play very well. I wasn’t impressed with the defenders that came into the side, and I didn’t like seeing Lindelof moved to right back, AWB should get minutes if Dalot leaves the pitch.

Overall not that bothered about the result, understand the sloppy performance and I’m more hopeful for the match on the weekend (should it go ahead).

 

[Boondog]

If Ericksen misses significant time we're up shit creek.

 

[Dominos]

One of the most annoying things about football is when you know it's not your day and there's still plenty of time left.

Not for 1 second did I think we were ever getting back into that game, we could still be playing tomorrow and we'd not have scored a goal.

Performances against Southampton and Leicester were not good either if we're honest, we just didn't manage to scrape an ugly win tonight. We're struggling in these games where we get no space in behind or on the counter.

 

[bosnian_red]

That’s incredibly unfair on Elanga, who matched Antony’s workrate and - unlike him - regularly got the better of his man.

I mean if Antony plays like this every time he plays then I would be calling him shit too! Generally though I really don't rate Elanga

 

[Glorio]

Will repeat - was extremely irresponsible of us not to bring in a decent CF. I don't know how often it will cost us this season - I hope not too many

 

[Boondog]

Ronaldo looks so off the pace it's unreal. He looks his age basically. Hopefully he sharpens up, but he looks miles off it.

Yeah I don't know if there are any defenders in the PL he could actually outrun. He has become a set piece. Love the guy but the truth is the truth. Feels like Maguire could smoke him in a footrace.

 

[Shiva87]

Missed the game but saw the highlights. I'd take a loss in this game, than one in the league. Rotation was important to get some rest to our first XI. This team is good enough to get out of this group by winning the next few games. Sociedad was the toughest in the group, and they weren't much of a challenge. Got lucky with a penalty call

If i were ETH, I'd play a similar XI in the next EL game just to get these players minutes and demand a performance from them. Keep the likes of Varane, Martinez, Rashford etc. fresh for the PL.

 

[Boondog]

If i were ETH, I'd play a similar XI in the next EL game just to get these players minutes and demand a performance from them. Keep the likes of Varane, Martinez, Rashford etc. fresh for the PL.

Yeah I think that's how he will approach it. He has to rest these guys and the EL is the time to do it. Just a sad state of affairs that he had to put Martinez in. That kid is the heart and soul of our team, they're different without him. To start the second half first thing he did was tell Maguire where to line up. Stud. Directly saved us the insult of giving up a crosser too, that was a goal for sure.

 

[caid]

It was a match where we clearly wanted to give minutes to players that hadn’t had many. We shouldn’t have lost because it wasn’t a penalty, but given the changes we didn’t play very well. I wasn’t impressed with the defenders that came into the side, and I didn’t like seeing Lindelof moved to right back, AWB should get minutes if Dalot leaves the pitch.

Overall not that bothered about the result, understand the sloppy performance and I’m more hopeful for the match on the weekend (should it go ahead).

We used 5 subs so that one kind of makes sense.

 

[AndyMUFC]

Think we saw why certain players have not been starting games, although as much as we weren't great and lacked a cutting edge, I wouldn't say they deserved to win either because they weren't great and we definitely had the better chances, mostly that fell to Ronaldo.

Ah well, it's the Europa League.

 

[Bondi77]

That’s incredibly unfair on Elanga, who matched Antony’s workrate and - unlike him - regularly got the better of his man.

I will not be surprised if Elanga ends up with more game time than Sancho by the end of the season and I will be surprised if Antony ends up being a force in England.

 

[RedOrange]

It was a match where we clearly wanted to give minutes to players that hadn’t had many. We shouldn’t have lost because it wasn’t a penalty, but given the changes we didn’t play very well. I wasn’t impressed with the defenders that came into the side, and I didn’t like seeing Lindelof moved to right back, AWB should get minutes if Dalot leaves the pitch.

Overall not that bothered about the result, understand the sloppy performance and I’m more hopeful for the match on the weekend (should it go ahead).

I think that was probably the original plan, but Martinez was needed because Maguire and Lindelof don't split the line with through balls like Martinez does. Removing Eriksen meant there was no one in the middle to pass the ball through the middle directly, so Martinez was needed to pick up the slack, otherwise there was no chance at all of a goal.

 

[jesperjaap]

As per a good season or two, we lacked a cutting edge and dont look balance going forward....we can hit teams on the break, no plan b.

DOnt know if it was the competition, certain players not in the starting line up or simply poor....but the most dissapointing thing for me, we showed no desire or intensity, even when 1-0 down, was literally only a 10min spell the whole game....and that is something that has improved a lot the last fe games, so hope isnt a regression there

 

[RedOrange]

That’s incredibly unfair on Elanga, who matched Antony’s workrate and - unlike him - regularly got the better of his man.

They put two defenders on Antony every time he had the ball.

 

[Mibabalou]

Casemero didn't look good but hopefully he picks it up in a few matches.

 

[Ted Lasso]

If Ericksen misses significant time we're up shit creek.

He's our most important player. Bruno doesn't have the game management intelligence of a CM. He's basically a CF and you saw that for much of the second half where Ronaldo was closer to the center circle trying to offer a pass because Bruno was way upfield

 

[Xtrmntr]

I went to this one,hopeless game of football on a strange night. Ronaldo looks hopeless,worst ive ever seen him play,casimero all over the place- badly needs gametime ,maguire makes everyone in the ground nervous. Erickson however is a class act

 

[Nicoseth]

There will be performances like this for a while to come - still much for these players to do, especially the fringe players, to get used to the ETH system. Having said that, some players did not do themselves any favors. Lindelof, Fred, Maguire and Ronaldo were well off it tonight.

I'm sure we'll see a much better performance next time out - we're still very much a work in progress.

 

[Cantonagotmehere]

Yawn.

Cool he got the youngins in there. We have a long way to go. We all know that.

 

[Sky1981]

Brazil midfield 0 sociedad 1

 

[Cantonagotmehere]

I went to this one,hopeless game of football on a strange night. Ronaldo looks hopeless,worst ive ever seen him play,casimero all over the place- badly needs gametime ,maguire makes everyone in the ground nervous. Erickson however is a class act

Serious question, was Maguire that bad or are we all just scarred? I thought he played OK, but only could see about 3/4 of the match.

 

[Bondi77]

I have never been a fan of this comp as it means we get more Sunday games which means I don't get to see the Premier League games in the weekend.
I would much rather we won the FA Cup than this shite and the only value is that the winner gets Chmps league football.
I would only take it seriously if we got to the quarter finals but if we did'nt make it out of the group stage I could not give a shit!

 

[NewGlory]

Ronaldo's worst ever game in United shirt? It was abysmal.

 

[NewGlory]

Serious question, was Maguire that bad or are we all just scarred? I thought he played OK, but only could see about 3/4 of the match.

He did nearly cost us second goal at 89th minute. A team less shitty than Sociedad would have scored. But the rest of actual game wasn't horrible, except he is a jinx even when he plays ok

 

[Daengophile]

EtH got to try out a few things - that didn't come off

And we got the arse-kick of reality

Lessons learned>result