But we passed it sideways a few times and weren't running off the ball every time so we play like zombies.
Static, slow motion zombie passing
- Thread starter noodlehair
- Start date
But we passed it sideways a few times and weren't running off the ball every time so we play like zombies.
I just think you're only seeing the passages of worse play. We played some really nice attacking stuff tonight. We're not that good a side that we'll play well for the whole game at the moment.
The problem is Carrick, not Scholes. Carrick was very good tonight, his long passing in particular was excellent. But when partnered with Scholes he just defers to him all the time if he's anywhere near him. The main reason it gets recycled so much is that Carrick is laying it back to Scholes when Scholes is marked, or laying it back to the centre-halves if he's being closed and doesn't immediately see something on. Scholes doesn't do the first thing, and he very often finds a better option than the second.
This is separate from the defensive issue - the fact that we're being sliced open all the time. Now that IS about Scholes, Carrick's excellent defensively.
You're right that starting them in a midfield 2 is not working against good sides.
Our attacking play up til the finish was excellent.
If someone had brought their shooting boots we could have had 4 or 5.
If someone had brought their shooting boots we could have had 4 or 5.
The walking dead 102 should be out tonight.
On topic: I think we showed some good passing combinations tonight but RvP really needs to get some more passes to work with.
But the issue there isn't then it's because the other two midfielders nani and Valencia are so far away from them. Compare to most other teams who don't play with wide wingers there are much more options. When you're being pressed quickly and 2 of your midfielders are almost as far away as they reasonably could be it limits your choices.
Scholes doesn't deal well with string pressure cause he lacks that altheticism to get a yard at times but carrick was fine.
Sometimes, when we came from the left. From the right it really wasnt and through the middle (apart from our goal) there wasnt much happening neither. We should do better than today, but hey 3 points.
It wasn't very funny last season when we routinely got wiped all over the floor by every half decent team we played in Europe.
And I didn't see very much good passing football. Occasionally one player woud make a run, and then it'd turn out Galatasaray were so poor defensively they wouldn't pick the player up.
We don't play god high tempo football in any game. We can't even do something basic like pass and move with any tempo at all. We either pass it around at 0.5mph, or ping it around to each other whilst standing completely still.
If Scholes is on the pitch we use him as a false comfort blanket, and then sit there looking utterly amazed with ourselves whenever it doesn't work...which is increasingly often.
I agree. I think I've said already in this thread I don't like Carrick and Scholes playing together. They both end up sitting a little too deep and haven't got the legs to take any risks and recover. Although bizarrely Carrick did exactly that for his goal..
Hate to say it. I have been thinking it for a while but................it is Scholes who is responsible for the zombie play. Our players look up, if there isn't anything on then they pass it back to Scholes, waiting for him to create. If there isn't something on for Scholes, then he passes it to the next player, The next player looks, can't find and then passes back to Scholes, if a team is well set, then the pattern repeats over and over.
That is my view anyway.
That is my view anyway.
We didn't though. Galatasaray just didn't pick up any runners all night. Literally every single time one of our players made a run from deep they ended up unmarked through on goal.
If they'd had a clue defensively we wouldn't have even been in the game.
We have enough good players not to be playing this type of football. Stoke have enough good players not to be playing this type of football.
And he should do it soo much more often. He's able to do so obviously. It's just that he's probably told no to. I'd like him to do much more offensively.
I think carrick in general is making more of an effort to get forward atm. I really think though that with a midfielder who didn't need his protection he could give us a lot more.
I think the issue is more scholes than anything. He just isn't suited to some games, games like these and if we're not going to change out approach when we are being really pressed and he is playing then we'll see issues like this. I don't think it's carrick personally and he has to stay deep because scholes goes deep as he knows he can't play high enough and get back in time.
Every time this thread is bumped a kitten loses its wings.
Well you saw against Southampton what happens when Scholes isn't on the pitch.
You seem to have a problem with our fundamental style of play; I don't think it's going to change any time soon. We'll just be doing a slightly quicker version of what we're currently doing post December when we go up a gear. You're going to be bumping this thread a hell of a lot.
If it's supposed to be our fundamental style of play then it has to be the most flawed style of play in history.
Try to play football without moving and rely on a retired 37 year old to be a one man team even when the opposition man mark him out of the game?
As long as we keep winning most of the time and stay in the title race our style won't change.
We're pretty much fecked in Europe playing like this but I'm not sure Fergie himself believes we're capable of winning the CL anymore.
We're pretty much fecked in Europe playing like this but I'm not sure Fergie himself believes we're capable of winning the CL anymore.
It's not going to win us the title either. We'll just frustrate everyone to death all season and finish comfortably second or third.
Seriously, this thread again?
I'm starting to think Noodlehair has some implanted memory of us (or some other team) playing some kind of matrix / ninja football with the ball constantly zipping forwards at every single opportunity.
Are we mostly agree, Noods aside, that the undead were not in attendance tonight, or is his nonsense catching on?
I'm starting to think Noodlehair has some implanted memory of us (or some other team) playing some kind of matrix / ninja football with the ball constantly zipping forwards at every single opportunity.
Are we mostly agree, Noods aside, that the undead were not in attendance tonight, or is his nonsense catching on?
I honestly don't know what you're saying with this bit. Our players shouldn't be making runs in behind the opposition defence, because we're better than that?
Sorry for sounding old-fashioned, but I quite like that type of football, and I did this evening, up until the point that the screwed up the final ball / shot.
No, I just have a memory that stretches back beyond January this year...we only seemed to start this nonsense when we brought Scholes back. Ever since then we've used him as a comfort blanket and looked utterly clueless whenever he's not been there.
We might have a weakness in midfield but we've bizarrely decided to base our entire style of play around focusing on it.
Righto...Please don't become one of those daft tits who deliberately missinterprets someoene elses point just because they think it makes them look like they're being smart.
No Noods - I honestly don't know what you're on about. It doesn't even seem to fit in with the rest of your argument from what I can tell, so I'm sure my attempts to work it out are wide of the mark...
I was simply pointing out that our "good passing football" was more down to Galatasaray not bothering to pick up runners than anything particularly clever or lively on our part.
but then you already knew that, when you decided to quote the post I made to someone else and change the intepretation of it to try and be a smart arse...
We've become just as reliant on giving to Valencia as to Scholes tbf. Far too often the first person we look to bring into the attack is him. In fact far too often the person looking to bring him in is Scholes. Which considering Tony's amazingly erratic at crossing, isn't particularly helpful. And especially now we have two brand new shiny players who thrive playing through the middle.
I kind of got that first bit, in isolation. But what do you mean about not wanting us to play that way? Because their slack defending let us make runs in behind them, we shouldn't have made runs in behind them?
It nearly always has to be Scholes that plays the ball to Valencia though. It's like no one else is allowed to play any kind of incisive pass if Scholes is on the pitch...and half the time he has to have three touches before he'll play it, making it about as incisive as trying to perform heart surgery with an inflatable hammer...and then yeah, it's nearly always just a slow diagonal out to Valencia who then has to beat two players just to put a cross into a box packed with defenders.
The ball never plays him in behind. He always has to do that part himself. So we may as well just have Carrick pass it to him along the floor. It'd make feck all difference.
It's quite embarassing how much Kagawa stands out just because he's actually trying to move players and create space for himself...whilst being ignored by his team mates unless he practically runs up and tackles them.
Don't think I've ever seen a team with as much talent look so hapeless and devoid of life in possession.
If it's meant to be a "gameplan" as people claim. It's the worst gameplan ever. Like a boxer with a weak chin pointing at his chin all the time and then trying to chin his opponent in the fist in order to beat him.
We were very dynamic early on, then we faded, which is annoyingly usual. That said we had the edge in attack all game and it was poor final balls and finishing more than a lack of midfield creativity.
We made runs in behind them bafflingly unoften considering it worked with a ridiculous amount of ease every single fecking time (and I mean every single time)...instead our attacking plan seemed to be to constantly play in front of them or out wide and let Valencia try to beat two people by running at them with the ball, and then crossing despite no one really bothering to make a run into the box.
The same depressingly predictable tactics we employ in every single fecking game, despite having players like Kagawa, Cleverley, Rooney, Anderson, Van Persie, Welbeck, Hernandez, Nani etc...who's strengths all lie in quick play through the middle and runs in behind.
We should be a superb attacking side to watch with the players we have. Instead we're the most boring United side I've seen.
What the feck? He was terrible today to be fair, but you'll hardly find a more consistent crosser than him. Is noodle's insanity contagious?
Valencia as poor as he was tonight isn't erratic at all at crossing, that's bollocks.
noods I honestly think you've got to the point where you're so obsessed with this zombie passing thing that you're not actually seeing it when we play well.
I agree in part with your critique but if you didn't see us playing some nice, slick one- and two-touch moves, but only saw Galatasaray 'not picking up the runners', then I don't know what to say. They're a good side, their lines got broken a lot because we played quick, accurate passing moves, which are hard to defend against.
We also played a whole lot of shite, no question, especially without the ball.
I agree in part with your critique but if you didn't see us playing some nice, slick one- and two-touch moves, but only saw Galatasaray 'not picking up the runners', then I don't know what to say. They're a good side, their lines got broken a lot because we played quick, accurate passing moves, which are hard to defend against.
We also played a whole lot of shite, no question, especially without the ball.
Not this season. I've found valencia's crossing to be very inconsistent this season.
Galatasaray play ultra offensive in Turkey and had 2 CL debutants at centre back + Eboue. Hardly a top defensive team United need to slice open. United did have some nice passages of play though through Kagawa and Nani when they took a pause from giving it to Scholes who feeds it to Tony V. This zombie passing thing might have gone a bit far but our pattern of play is so extremely predictable that opponents don't even need to watch game videos of United to know what will happen when we have the ball.
It's always been "erratic" but since he gets past his man so often having one of his 8 crosses in a match resulting in a goal is generally good enough. It's usually Rooney that scores on his crosses though.
They didn't look a very good side to me Plech. They were fine with the ball but they were hopeless without it. Running around like headless chickens, having three people close down whoever was in possession and leaving other players free to run off them all the time as a result. Their midfielders tracked nothing that ran beyond them all night. We should be pasting teams as naive as that frankly, with the players we have.
Instead, if they'd had any sort of organisation off the ball (as decent teams in Europe tend to have), I reckon they'd have just beaten us, similar to how Bilbao did last year. We played nearly everything in front of them, as we do in nearly every game, and then lacked anything like the composure or tempo or penetration needed to make that kind of style work. It was the same slow ball out to Valencia's feet, again and again. It's just become an infuriating and frustrating theme which carries from one game to the next.
Sure, there were BITS of decent football, but bits, not anything constructed into any kind of coherent performance or gameplan. Mostly we just lost the ball a lot and then got caught out positionally by the speed which they moved it up the pitch compared to us. Lucky also that our centrebacks looked organised for the first time this season.
Players definitely look to Scholes whenever possible, but I don't think 'responsible' is the right word. That's more the other players being responsible for not keeping up the tempo than it is Scholes' fault for doing his job, surely.
Some of the most zombie-ish stuff going came when Scholes wasn't on the pitch against Fulham the other week. That game was fecked up for the most part...
Tonight was better, I thought. Still elements of this bizarre collective hesitance, carelessness and sluggishness, but a lot of quality football too.
As I said in the Van Persie thread, we have now assembled a squad of players that are very good at what they do, but they just don't want to play the same way as eachother. It's a complete fecking mish-mash.
RVP- Looks for early balls from midfielders through the middle, yet we don't have a midfielder that wants to play that ball.
Kagawa- Plays quick one touch passing, one-two's and triangles around opposition players, yet nobody in our team seems to have recognised this. Instead, we have Scholes and Carrick stood 30 yards behind him. He needs mobile players around him in the centre.
Valencia - Wants to cross balls in everytime, yet there is never anyone in the box. This seems to be the only way we know how to create chances now and it's fecking shit in all honesty. We've brought in players that are great at one thing and asked them to play completely different just to fit in with Valencia.
We have a select group of players that will play quick, incisive passing in a completely flexible system that would be a joy to watch. Players such as Welbeck, Cleverley, Kagawa, Nani, Anderson. Then there are the other set that play more structured football and will thrive on having wingers creating chances from out wide, which in turn makes up from our lack of penetration through the middle. These are players like Van Persie, Hernandez, Rooney, Carrick, Scholes, Valencia and Young.
Somehow we've built a squad to play two different systems, but I just don't think we'll ever see us at our best until we build our teams to suit eachothers styles, which may happen further down the line. Combinations of players such as Kagawa/Valencia or Carrick/Cleverley just don't make sense to me.
RVP- Looks for early balls from midfielders through the middle, yet we don't have a midfielder that wants to play that ball.
Kagawa- Plays quick one touch passing, one-two's and triangles around opposition players, yet nobody in our team seems to have recognised this. Instead, we have Scholes and Carrick stood 30 yards behind him. He needs mobile players around him in the centre.
Valencia - Wants to cross balls in everytime, yet there is never anyone in the box. This seems to be the only way we know how to create chances now and it's fecking shit in all honesty. We've brought in players that are great at one thing and asked them to play completely different just to fit in with Valencia.
We have a select group of players that will play quick, incisive passing in a completely flexible system that would be a joy to watch. Players such as Welbeck, Cleverley, Kagawa, Nani, Anderson. Then there are the other set that play more structured football and will thrive on having wingers creating chances from out wide, which in turn makes up from our lack of penetration through the middle. These are players like Van Persie, Hernandez, Rooney, Carrick, Scholes, Valencia and Young.
Somehow we've built a squad to play two different systems, but I just don't think we'll ever see us at our best until we build our teams to suit eachothers styles, which may happen further down the line. Combinations of players such as Kagawa/Valencia or Carrick/Cleverley just don't make sense to me.
It's bizarre, isn't it? Asking players to adapt their game to fit into a new team? Completely unheard of.
I don't think it's fair how Carrick gets shoehorned in to our midfield not being mobile enough or that he can't play with Clev or mobile players. During his time here he's partnered a variety of players with different styles very well. The issue is Scholes. Scholes will push up occassionally or when we're really dominating but the majority of the time he sits back and tried to orchestatrate. The problem with that is that he can't play as the holding player, nor really cover his partner, so the majority of the time, his partner, i.e. Carrick also has to drop deep. If he doesn't drop as well then we'd be even more exposed to counters through the middle.
This isn't such an issue but it allows other teams to push up high on us. The problem with this is that then we won't change out style and still want our wingers to stay wide. This puts a lot more pressure on the midfielders as they've got big gaps between them and the wingers which really reduces all their passing options. I've said before but look at all the teams that play a short passing game and the common theme is that you have a lot of players within a few yards of each other. For us we have the midfield and defence and then massive gaps to the wingers and strikers.
If Scholes is going to play these sort of games then although he probably won't be as sloppy as today he will still have issues and we either need to recognize this and play more narrow or take him out of these games. But like I said it's not Carricks fault, if he had/has a partner that can actually cover for him he could push up more and having a more physically able partner would also allow the midfield to push up more in general. Issue is that Clev has shown that whilst he's a hard worker he can be far too eager to break forward, leaving big gaps.
But most the problems today were due to sloppyness particularly Scholes and Valencia. When we settled down we opened them up at will and created some great stuff. I think we have some issues which we've had for a while that I'd hoped we would have addressed but we really aren't that bad.
This isn't such an issue but it allows other teams to push up high on us. The problem with this is that then we won't change out style and still want our wingers to stay wide. This puts a lot more pressure on the midfielders as they've got big gaps between them and the wingers which really reduces all their passing options. I've said before but look at all the teams that play a short passing game and the common theme is that you have a lot of players within a few yards of each other. For us we have the midfield and defence and then massive gaps to the wingers and strikers.
If Scholes is going to play these sort of games then although he probably won't be as sloppy as today he will still have issues and we either need to recognize this and play more narrow or take him out of these games. But like I said it's not Carricks fault, if he had/has a partner that can actually cover for him he could push up more and having a more physically able partner would also allow the midfield to push up more in general. Issue is that Clev has shown that whilst he's a hard worker he can be far too eager to break forward, leaving big gaps.
But most the problems today were due to sloppyness particularly Scholes and Valencia. When we settled down we opened them up at will and created some great stuff. I think we have some issues which we've had for a while that I'd hoped we would have addressed but we really aren't that bad.
Raphael running into the area to gain a penalty wasn't zombie-like.
Terribly old-fashioned mind. But nice.
Terribly old-fashioned mind. But nice.
That's very true of the Scholes-Carrick partnership, but what has Carrick done to dispel this myth when paired with other players? He's never really played that well with Anderson, yet as soon as Anderson got paired with Cleverley it suddenly looked good. Further to my last post, Anderson seems to work best with a midfield partner that is always close by to take the ball of him. This is what Cleverley managed to so well early on last season. When Anderson plays with Carrick he gets closed down and finds himself 20 yards away from his midfield partner with nobody to pass it to in order to keep possession. We might get by playing like this, but I just don't feel we're going to get the best out of some of our players.