[Ananke]

Wolves is a notoriously difficult place to go to get a result. Fergie went there and lost more than once, you'd swear we lost... we didn't... we won Lovely smash and grab thanks, I'll take that!

Southampton was poor sure.

All told I must be imagining us being joint top scorers and top of the league. Simply not good enough apparently.

YB, s*it happens on the back of two idiotic mistakes from our players. Happens to the best of players and managers.

I wouldn't bother with this guy, all his posts are negative. Don't even think he's a United fan tbh.

 

[The United Irishman]

Wolves is a notoriously difficult place to go to get a result. Fergie went there and lost more than once, you'd swear we lost... we didn't... we won Lovely smash and grab thanks, I'll take that!

Southampton was poor sure.

All told I must be imagining us being joint top scorers and top of the league. Simply not good enough apparently.

YB, s*it happens on the back of two idiotic mistakes from our players. Happens to the best of players and managers.

Totally agree with your assessment. Another night we would have won that game comfortably. The early red card cost us and was a silly spur in the moment challenge, hopefully AWB learns from that. We were 30 seconds from a good point playing most of the game with 10 men in a hostile stadium in which the crowd were dictating the refs decisions... A total brain fart from Jessie cost us that point. This is down to player errors not the manager, he was forced into the subs due to the constant pressure we were under for most of the game. These things happen. People round here lose patience too quickly and call for the manager's head after every defeat.

 

[Craig Ward]

In isolation - it's a terrible result, quite an humiliating one at that.

In the bigger picture, it's not as awful as people are making out. Should we have won? Yes. Should we have won with 10 men? Absolutely.

Individual errors have cost us. This is on the players, not Ole. In-game management was lacking, we lost control and allowed young Boys to get into the game. With the quality we had on the pitch we should have easily have won.

AWB is a tackling full back, thats the only way he knows how to play. Deserved red. Put us in the deep end. Jesse - absolute howler. When your taking Ronaldo off for Jesse you know your squad depth is lacking. I've long thought Jesse should leave for the better of his own career and the fact that he has proven for years he isn't providing our squad with enough to warrant game time. His glimpse of form at West Ham just masks over the cracks for me. He might do well elsewhere, but he has no purpose here whatsoever.

For all the good of the three signings, our depth is still lacking. We desperately needed to ship players out this summer and we didnt. We shouldnt be giving Lingard game time - end of.

Landed that Donny got a start but our game strategy changed after the red. Sancho's night cut short too.

Bad night all round, but we'll regroup and go again. Horrid pitch and a few errors will cost you at this level. Steep learning curve

 

[BusbyMalone]

Two shots all game, no shots at all after the 25th-minute mark. Even in the circumstances, that's pretty awful. AWB should obviously take a huge amount of blame, but Ole made a bad situation worse, in my opinion. Putting ourselves under even more pressure and inviting them on like that is likely to lead to more mistakes, which we obviously saw.

Taking both Ronaldo and Sancho off meant that they didn't need to worry about anyone breaking in behind, hence why they could attack with such abandon. Going to a back five is almost a rudimentary tactical change. The supposed justification for it seems to be that more numbers means better, when in fact it just made us come under more pressure and relinquished all control of the game over to them.

Not good.

 

[TheMagicFoolBus]

Yeah I think it was tbh, the more I think about it and look back at the Liverpool - Chelsea game you've given as an example.

Hell, even prior to going down a man Liverpool were dominating them. Elliot and Henderson both had decent chances before Chelsea took the lead against the run of play.

 

[gerdm07]

Playing 5-3-1 made no sense we lost the midfield in the second half and basically could not get near their goal. Also we could not keep possession at all and we were toothless on the counter.
The viable tactic when you are one man down is 4-4-1 this way you can occupy the spaces in midfield and create the illusion of equity.
You don't need 3 CB's to defend corners as even the striker can come and help in that situation. Their 1-1 goal came from the center where we had 3 CB's and Varane was the one who lost his marker (even though it was a very lucky goal because of the cross deflection).

Pogba is at it's worst when pressed hard and he does not have the workrates to compensate the man down. We should have used Fred and Matic as CDM's in the second half and some fresh legs on the wings to try and counter them. We had Sancho, Martial, Greenwod who can play there.

I really don't care how much YB has worked their buts and I don't want to give them any credit. I care about us and the fact that we show the same weaknesses every year worries me. YB is a smaller team that we should beat/dominate even with 10 men.

Their 1-1 goal was a fluke. It was well defended, the cross took a deflection, and then the YB player got a lucky touch for the goal.

Pogba was able to keep possession a number of times during the 2nd half, more so than anyone else that I remember.

We know we don't have a good midfield and it's discussed continuously here. Why then would anyone expect us to be able to control a match down a man? We know Fred's deficiencies, Pogba is not his best as a DM, Matic is too slow, and Ole doesn't trust VdB. How is this midfield supposed to control an away match a man down? People here say MC would have still owned possession and that's true. But they have a great midfield.

 

[gerdm07]

Your back line is supposed to be straight for a start.

But you suggest the back line is spread out across the width of the pitch, it isn't.

As you can see from your screen shot below, from the far touchline we've our back 5 paying very closely together and the biggest gap is actually behind Shaw, at a rough estimate I'd say its about 25-30 yards open space behind Shaw, considering he is only slightly past the centre of the D (edge of box). That is not the width of the pitch at all.

Our back 5 is supposed to stay close together as is proven in your screen shot so they can communicate for offsides and it doesn't leave gaps for players to run into behind. Sadly the offside is negated due to the moment of idiocy from Lingard and his woeful pass which cost us.

There is nothing really wrong with the defense in that image. The YB player was pretty smart to anticipate a back pass. Lingard, of course, should have passed it to DDG's right outside the goal with a little more pace and we get a draw.

 

[Salus Populi Suprema Lex]

I'm still fuming about last night; we threw away a great opportunity. Wan-Bissaka and Lingard made crazy decisions; Ole's tactics after the red card were hard to understand. Terrible stuff all round.

 

[Giggsyking]

I wouldn't bother with this guy, all his posts are negative. Don't even think he's a United fan tbh.

Cut the crap. I support united maybe even before you were born. Maybe you are the one who is not a united fan being all happy with no trophies!

 

[Offsideagain]

Should have gone to a 4-4-1 after the red card instead of a back five which encouraged YB to attack us. Poor judgement again. Ole won’t be fired unless we get knocked out of the CL and don’t qualify. The players also must take some responsibility for another average performance. Out fought and out thought.

 

[Ali Dia]

You make your own luck and we didn’t deserve to get lucky

 

[reelworld]

Their 1-1 goal was a fluke. It was well defended, the cross took a deflection, and then the YB player got a lucky touch for the goal.

Pogba was able to keep possession a number of times during the 2nd half, more so than anyone else that I remember.

We know we don't have a good midfield and it's discussed continuously here. Why then would anyone expect us to be able to control a match down a man? We know Fred's deficiencies, Pogba is not his best as a DM, Matic is too slow, and Ole doesn't trust VdB. How is this midfield supposed to control an away match a man down? People here say MC would have still owned possession and that's true. But they have a great midfield.

I don't really agree that it's a fluke.

I mean if you're giving them the ball all the time, then they would have time and opportunity to try again and again, then there's a chance some of that tries would be successful.

 

[gerdm07]

I don't really agree that it's a fluke.

I mean if you're giving them the ball all the time, then they would have time and opportunity to try again and again, then there's a chance some of that tries would be successful.

Good point. That just wasn't a good chance and 9/10 times that doesn't go in the goal. That's my definition of a fluke goal.

 

[DSG]

The first part of your post makes you sound really obnoxious.

Then it goes downhill when you start going on about the reason why you are right, after the game has finished and proved, extremely definitively, that you were and are in fact, completely wrong.

Unless you watched the second half and came to the conclusion that we played well and were somehow unlucky, in which case you are both delusional and completely wrong.

I literally explained how I would have "fixed it" in my post which you obviously also didn't bother to read properly before deciding to reply to

trying to pretend to be a tactical football genius on the internet is a mugs game. Doubly so when you are trying to explain why it was tactically right for the team you support to play awfully and lose the game.

This is boring. The performance was poor, nobody is denying that, but your comment was that Ole was to blame tactically. I disagree and I explained why, you gave an action but no analysis behind it. Just pointing this out.

 

[Tincanalley]

How dare he blame some players in a game that we were dominating, until a stupid tackle, and then were going to draw(a good result away from home with 10 men), until a once in a blue moon shocker of a back pass.

There was no plan B. No shape. He clearly panicked and reacted. Carrick, Phelan, McKenna, Fletcher and Olé. Not up to the job. He said lingard another day “would have booted it” somewhere else. That there would be learning (apparently for Jesse, about the best direction for clearances under pressure). What about learning for himself, about composure, keeping the ball, playing well with ten? It’s not just a stupid tackle and a bad pass, that’s too easy a get out for the manager.

 

[DSG]

Your explanation was that Ole wanted to deal with constant 3v2s in midfield by... removing a midfielder.

That's one way of doing it, I guess: turn those 3v2s into 3v1s!

There’s a pretty interesting clip of post match analysis with Eddie Newton, previously asst. coach with Chelsea on the football show that sums it up, IMHO.

 

[UTD_Since_1978]

Would the SAF results be worse then? If you applied common sense here (I know, mind boggling request).

There was no red card in those games against Basel or Maccabi. Yet we lost 2-1 and 3-0 respectively.

VS

We played 60 mins of football on an astro turf pitch with a man down. They were absolutely buoyed and out for blood against us once the red happened.

Which is worse?

I'd suggest SAF results!

You know that 3-0 defeat to Maccabi, if I recall correctly, we had already won the group & Fergie picked a fairly youthful starting XI resting a few regular experienced starters.

Whilst yesterday, Ole picked a very strong starting XI, then took off the two guys who could win us the game (Bruno & Ronaldo) & let's not forget Ronaldo is one of the fittest footballers on the planet plus only the other week he scored 2 very late goals when Portugal looked like they might lose, yesterday Ole subbed him & we did lose, the Portugal manager kept Ronaldo on & he notched 2 goals & Portugal won, the facts speak for themselves.

So I would suggest Ole's results at times have been worse, my case is rested.

 

[RedC]

There was no plan B. No shape. He clearly panicked and reacted. Carrick, Phelan, McKenna, Fletcher and Olé. Not up to the job. He said lingard another day “would have booted it” somewhere else. That there would be learning (apparently for Jesse, about the best direction for clearances under pressure). What about learning for himself, about composure, keeping the ball, playing well with ten? It’s not just a stupid tackle and a bad pass, that’s too easy a get out for the manager.

He may not have made the best decision by taking VdB off, but I don't think this freak out everyone is having in this thread is really warranted, given the context of the loss. I would expect most players in the world to 'boot it' in the 94th minute of a game, there is literally zero wrong with that.

We played a team that were playing like it was the CL final, fit as fiddles, in their buzzing home stadium with 1 man less, it's incredibly hard to do anything other than try and get through it.

 

[DSG]

I was not for Ole Out. But his post match presser changed that. He basically blamed the players, showed no sign of any insight into his own disastrous game management, substitutions, etc. No sign of learning. It’s as if it was still 1990. It’s the SAF fanclub. Nostalgia, sentiment, hard work, energy and vibes.

???

I watched the presser and got a distinctly different impression. He explained why he subbed Varane in, and basically supports Jesse by saying “it happens”.

 

[VidaRed]

Ole should have gone 4-4-1

------------------------DDG------------------------
--Dalot---Varane---Maguire---Shaw--
--Mason----Matic----Fred----Sancho--
---------------------Ronaldo---------------------

 

[Gonçalo Motta]

Subbing Ronaldo was the right call.

He is a great player but there's no way that makes sense keeping him in the game where we are creating 0 chances and he would be forced to waste energy to track back.

On the other hand removing Bruno + Ronaldo makes no sense because we are just killing any way we can of creating some sort of damage on counters.

It was a freak result based on bad strategy by Ole and bad decisions by both AWB and Lingard. There's no way that Ole could predict Lingard's brainfart but he shouldn't be defending the result against YB even with 10 players.

Time to move on

 

[USREDEVIL]

Subbing Ronaldo was the right call.

He is a great player but there's no way that makes sense keeping him in the game where we are creating 0 chances and he would be forced to waste energy to track back.

On the other hand removing Bruno + Ronaldo makes no sense because we are just killing any way we can of creating some sort of damage on counters.

It was a freak result based on bad strategy by Ole and bad decisions by both AWB and Lingard. There's no way that Ole could predict Lingard's brainfart but he shouldn't be defending the result against YB even with 10 players.

Time to move on

100% my ninja

 

[noodlehair]

This is boring. The performance was poor, nobody is denying that, but your comment was that Ole was to blame tactically. I disagree and I explained why, you gave an action but no analysis behind it. Just pointing this out.

Why reply then?

You reply as if you have some kind of weird superiority complex about football tactics that you need to exercise, except you do this while trying to explain how playing poorly and losing to a vastly inferior opponent was tactically the correct thing to do, which just makes you look like an idiot who's being obnoxious for the sake of it.

I don't provide an in depth analysis because it isn't really needed. Playing with 10 men and leaving yourself with no functioning midfield or attacking threat, and playing players in positions they can't play in due to making ill thought out substitutions = bad management. Watching the game backs this up, the stats back this up, the result backs this up.

No amount of snotty tactical analysis nerdery is really needed. We can go into that when the tactics actually make any sense beyond "put extra defender on and hope other team doesn't score" in the first place.

You are also allowed to reply to people and disagree like a normal person rather than immediately turn it into some kind of battle of who is better. I realise this is very hard for people on here but it is actually quite possible.

 

[VanDeBank]

Ole should have gone 4-4-1

------------------------DDG------------------------
--Dalot---Varane---Maguire---Shaw--
--Mason----Matic----Fred----Sancho--
---------------------Ronaldo---------------------

You wanted us to make 4 subs and leave your worst player on (Sancho), and also Ronaldo, who you know might struggle seeing the game out?

I'd have made the same Sancho -> Dalot sub as Ole, and I would have went:

Martial
Fred Lingard Bruno
Shaw Maguire Varane Lindelof Dalot
DDG
​

at half time and probably Bruno -> Matic in the final minutes if no injuries.

 

[Berbasbullet]

I only heard the match on the radio but after the red card my first instinct was that 3 at the back might have been the way forward. I always think 3 at the back as 10 men is probably the optimal system, just in terms of when I have seen teams drop to 10 men operate previously (I remember a 10 Man City defending well against us with that formation).

 

[Deery]

I only heard the match on the radio but after the red card my first instinct was that 3 at the back might have been the way forward. I always think 3 at the back as 10 men is probably the optimal system, just in terms of when I have seen teams drop to 10 men operate previously (I remember a 10 Man City defending well against us with that formation).

Young Boys were playing some good football though maybe the radio didn’t pick up on that and giving up midfield seemed a mistake, I have to say I was surprised to see Varane and thought it was lazy management just throwing in your galactico when the game didn’t really reflect that decision. Also a complete lack of trust in Donny as well when it was probably a game we needed his ball retention.

 

[Harry190]

I thought Young Boys were quite lucky to get the 2 goals. Frankly, they're just not very good. They took 19 shots. Maybe 2 of them were really troublesome.

 

[ClosetDevil]

I see this result as a good reality check for the players and fans alike. This is a good, necessary thing to have happened.

 

[Dr. Dwayne]

feck. I just realized that I forgot to wear red underwear yesterday so this loss is on me. Sorry guys.

 

[TheRedHearted]

Has anyone talked about Young Boys’s press? To me it seemed like they have 12 men on the bitch. We just seemed so slow compared to them. And on the counter it seemed like we had no desire to hit them with speed.
We can argue all day it’s because there were no tactics and our players looked lost. Or that YBs had a system and we didn’t but I just don’t get why our players forgot how to pass and move. I didn’t see a single triangle out there

 

[Leftback99]

The lack of defensive work rate in our forwards will be an issue this season I think.

Pogba, Ronaldo and Sancho is as weak a front 3 as we can pick in that regard. With 10 men it's a disaster.

 

[UnitedSofa]

Should have gone to a 4-4-1 after the red card instead of a back five which encouraged YB to attack us. Poor judgement again. Ole won’t be fired unless we get knocked out of the CL and don’t qualify. The players also must take some responsibility for another average performance. Out fought and out thought.

The ex Chelsea coach Eddie Newton goes into as to why going to a back 5 was beneficial…

 

[frostbite]

Individual errors have cost us.

People keep repeating this, but this was not the main problem. The main problem was that Ole did not know how to react to the red card, and he messed up the team. He replaced 4 of the 5 attackers. First he went to 4-4-1, then to 5-3-1, like a desperate Stokes team playing against top Barca with Messi. Ole and his failed tactics, or lack of tactics, was the reason we had zero attempts on goal after the red card. It was sad and humiliating, especially because this happened against the weakest team of our group. This is a recurring problem with Ole, he does not know how to react to situations, he is slow to adapt to problems on the pitch in real time. That's the reason many of us are upset, not the "individual errors".

 

[MyBloodIsRed]

So AWB misses 3 CL games??? Or 3 across all comps

 

[MIC_FIN]

State of this thread. Have a bit of support for the team. There are some absolute Superman's on here.

 

[TheMagicFoolBus]

So AWB misses 3 CL games??? Or 3 across all comps

3 CL games

 

[clarkydaz]

3 CL games

Wow that's harsh

 

[LJJT]

We missed Dan James last night. Especially when we went down to 10 men

 

[Dante]

The club should never have allowed our midfield options to become so weak that Jesse Lingard had to play CM in the final minutes of a Champions League away match.

I know that half the threads on here seem to turn into a complaint about our midfield. But this game was a perfect example as to why. I really hope Ole is pushing for January reinforcements the way he did with Bruno. If West Ham get knocked out of the EL, I think we all know who the number one target is going to be.

That being said, in the grand scheme of things we should still be okay in the CL. We're only 1 point behind Atalanta and Villareal, with another 5 games to play.

Once McTominay comes back, we just need to get back to the tried and trusted McFred formula that got us 2nd place last season. With Varane behind them and Ronaldo ahead of them, it should be more than enough to keep us in the hunt until at least the transfer window.

I think Rashford would have been perfect for this game. He gets a lot of stick for taking risks that don't pay off. But this match was exactly the kind of situation he'd have thrived in - singlehandedly driving us up the pitch and pushing back the YB defensive line with his pace. Without him and James, United have lost arguably their most dangerous weapon from the past few seasons. In all the hype about Ronaldo, a lot of people seem to have forgotten that. It's a new team learning to play a new game. There was always going to be a bedding in period.

I'm still confident about our chances. There's a lot more to come from this squad, even without a new midfielder. But bring one in and we become solid challengers in all four competitions.

 

[tomaldinho1]

Pogba, Fred, VdB, Matic all played in that game...that's 4 CMs in one game