That was actually a much improved performance

Palace were less threatened when we had the ball, than when they had it.
 
Attacking play isn't just there. We waited till 60th minute to actually start playing. Rashford is ruining everything.

Garnacho should have come in at half time.
 
There was a time we used to measure success by what Trophies we won , now it seems giving teams like Palace a good game at home but ultimately losing is being deemed a sort of success.

And we need to weed ourselves off this injuries excuse we use as a crutch , you would swear by some here that we were the only team to pick up injuries.

We had a strong team out yesterday worth 100''s of millions and we still lost , injuries or not the squad of players we have right now is just so far off the quality needed to compete with the top teams.
 
noodlehair said:
See this was my perception too.

I thought you were well organised and did well in the circumstances, but I don't remember us playing a Palace team with so little threat on the break and so little intent to even try and have a threat...but then you took the lead fairly early on and there wasn't a single period of the game where anyone can say they would have been thinking "United are going to score here" so what reason was there for you to contest us more in possession and risk being more open? I reckon your players were baffled how we weren't making it a lot more difficult for them.

I don't see how anyone can come to the conclusion we improved or played well when the game was basically an enactment of Hodgson's tactical plan where it was almost like he'd instructed our players as well as yours..
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Yeah the lack of attacking quality in the Palace squad is appalling right now, I don’t see any goals whatsoever in Schlupp, Ayew and Mateta and all we’ve got on the bench is a 19 year old winger who was at Charlton last season (and he got hooked at HT in the cup game). If you managed to score first it would have been game over and a routine win.

Luckily I think we also have a top 6-8 defensive spine in Johnstone, Andersen, Guehi and Doucoure. We also have two solid full-backs who can defend well (but get a nosebleed when crossing the halfway line). If we were going to get a result it was only ever going to be a 0-0 or scoring an opportunistic goal and defending the lead.

That’s why I’d ignore the match stats, we only had the players to play one way and we still won. You honestly won’t face a more impotent attack all season.
 
It was much better from a possession standpoint. Don't care if the opposing team allows us to have the ball, I prefer to have 90% possession so as far as i'm concerned that was good. Now the next step is to actually do something with the ball when we have it and that is on the front 4. Bruno, Rashford, Hojlund and Pellistri were ineffective. Particularly Bruno, Rashford and Pellistri who created next to nothing for Hojlund all game.
 
Reading the OP, I can't help but think back to when Alex Ferguson criticised his players at Aberdeen for not performing at the standards he expected, right after they'd won a cup final.

Standards have been in the gutter for years at this club.

The performance yesterday was shite and not befitting of a United team
 
Really? Did we win? I don't even think it was a good performance. We only started playing with urgency in the 2nd half. I really got a problem with ETH, what the point of having possession and hardly threatening? Why can't we play 1st half like we are a goal down? Why we can't start every match with urgency to score? This is not Liverpool or City or Arsenal, we don't have to start playing passive football until our opposition score!!! If we had urgency like 2nd half, we would have score early and potentially coast to a victory.
 
It was shit performance.

Teams now have 2 ways to play against us and either way they play they will either get them a win or at least a draw.

They can try to go and battle us and easily overpower our weak midfield, we easily concede and then crumble, Bayern, Brighton and Spurs are examples of that even vs Burnly, the only reason we won was Brunly didn't score despite their dominance and control of the game.

Or they can just sit deep and rely on set pieces without worrying about us scoring because it's painfully obvious we lack the cutting edge to create chances and score goals.

Even Arsenal tried a mix of both tactics, they didn't press us during build up phase since they knew they can just nick the ball from us from the middle third or just get back in numbers and sit deep of they have too.

We don't resemble a team that can play proper football and oppo teams find it easy to play us and as time goes teams will know what to do unless Ten Hag finds a solution
 
Shipperley said:
Yeah the lack of attacking quality in the Palace squad is appalling right now, I don’t see any goals whatsoever in Schlupp, Ayew and Mateta and all we’ve got on the bench is a 19 year old winger who was at Charlton last season (and he got hooked at HT in the cup game). If you managed to score first it would have been game over and a routine win.

Luckily I think we also have a top 6-8 defensive spine in Johnstone, Andersen, Guehi and Doucoure. We also have two solid full-backs who can defend well (but get a nosebleed when crossing the halfway line). If we were going to get a result it was only ever going to be a 0-0 or scoring an opportunistic goal and defending the lead.

That’s why I’d ignore the match stats, we only had the players to play one way and we still won. You honestly won’t face a more impotent attack all season.
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I think we play that set up against most teams and they are just runnning through at our centrebacks every 3-4 minutes. The space was there to do it all game, as it was against Wolves and Spurs (both of who exposed it as soon as our energy levels dropped a bit). Casemiro cannot cover the whole width of the pitch himself and neither Fernandes or Mount are going to help him. Mount spends a lot of time out wide for some reason and Fernandes just goes where he wants. Both have absolute 0 physical presence so it doesn't matter if they work hard to get back as they aren't going to be brushing a 6ft opponent off the ball and aren't going to catch up with most players with a similar frame to them.

Teams can counter us at will if they want. or overrun our midfield, or going by yesterday can also sit off and watch us play in front of them. That doesn't leave a lot of games that aren't going to be a big struggle unless Ten Hag drops whatever his current plan is.

Largely agree with you about Palace. Unusual to see such little attacking threat but everything else looked fairly solid. Very little panicking or illogical time wasting so must be fairly well drilled...although I don't know if that would have changed if we actually managed to apply any real pressure. We didn't really do much to test you. We COULD have scored but City, Liverpool, Arsenal, etc...even Spurs, would be forcing the issue not just knocking the ball about with no clue what to do with it.
 
The only stats that matters is -
Goals for - 0
Goals against - 1
Points won - 0
 
I agree, it was better and we certainly looked a lot more cohesive as a team, both on and off the ball. However, this is a results business, and ultimately, that's what ten Hag will be judged on. For example, I'd have much preferred us to play how we played against Wolves and bagged a win, then to play better and lose.

We have a game tomorrow, so we don't have to wait too long for us to hopefully turn a bad result around, but we need to get some wins on the board. Yes, we have a few injuries, and as you said, we have some players out who play a pivotal part in a build play, but 4 losses from 7 games is not acceptable whatever way we look at it.
 
I don’t agree at all with the OP. Our performance was poor and the few chances we created were hand chances at best. I’d be interested in seeing the official xG but I can’t imagine it was anywhere near 2 or 3.

As for possession percentage, it’s such a misleading stat. Passing the ball back to our keeper and sideways between the defenders is ok up to a point, but it became a crutch to conceal our inability to create openings in advanced areas. We relied too heavily on sending everything through Rashford, whose head just wasn’t into the game yesterday.

This wasn’t a new low, I’ll grant the poster who started this thread that much, but this was a really disturbing performance that tells me there’s a serious disconnect between the players and the manager and between the players themselves.
 
We looked like we could play another 90 and not score. We did not look good offensively yesterday, no way.
 
noodlehair said:
Well for a start you don't even know that they did want him. This is the first I've heard of it, from you. Arteta ended up signing Havertz as a no8 after we'd signed Mount btw. I very much doubt he'd have signed Rice just to then sign Mount and play him instead or next to him. That would a genuinely crazy thing to do.

I mean where are you getting this from? He's literally never played in CM before ETH put him there. Now all of a sudden based on that and us looking absolutely atrocious in the few games where he has played there, you think Arsenal and Liverpool would play him as a CM. You don't realise how bonkers a logic this is?

He was retaining the ball because he wasn't trying to do anything with it. You can get anyone to do that. And his mobility amounted to absolutely feck all. I'd rather he have some positional awareness, but then I do think it's unfair to criticise him for not knowing how to position himself in a role that makes no sense. He probably was doing what he was told to.

If we'd wanted ball retention and mobility we'd have been better off playing Hannibal who is at least aggressive with his mobility and has the ability to commit opposition players when on the ball so might actually have created a bit of space.

The crux of the issue is I'm still trying to work out what ETH wants Mount to do, and how whatever that is will be so effective it's worth exposing our midfield for. If its to contribute what he did yesterday then I'm sorry but no matter how you want to dress it up we're in a lot of fecking trouble
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There was a lot of chat regarding him turning down Liverpool and Arsenal, I’m sure if you wanted to a quick google search it would show you that. Quite obviously he’d have played in a midfield 3 for either of them given how they play their wide men, you’re being disingenuous or don’t watch enough of them to claim that.

We’ve looked atrocious with or without him, but he was one of the better performers yesterday and was very good mid week, having just returned from injury. He’s had what 3 and a half games? Looks to me as someone who never properly watched him at Chelsea (whose fans on here seem to rate him very highly, not the Twitter idiots) and assumed he’s a shit signing, and now you won’t see anything else. He might not have consistently played in a midfield 3, but Chelsea very rarely played a 3. He's got the skill set for it and players often drop from 10s to 8s as their careers progress.

The midfield is exposed because we can’t sustain attacks as we have multiple players who give the ball away constantly and cheaply, not because Mason Mount is playing in a midfield 3.
 
It' a different problem to the one we were having in the first few games. We look less susceptible to being countered and run through in midfield.

Lack of width from left full back hampers Rashford in that he can't drop back against the low block. He's been very good doing this previously against packed defences with Shaw providing both width and penetration. Hodgson saw what didn't work on Tuesday and, along with a slice of luck. had his team defend well.

This also affected Dalot's attacking opportunities in the PL match as Palace were set up to nullify the threat down the right side too. I'm sure ten Hag will be able to find a solution for this until we get people back.
 
Palace were barely threatened and it wouldn't have really mattered if Utd had 30minutes extra time. Did not look like scoring at all. Like LVG's 80% possession although atleast under him Utd were defensively solid for the most part.


If that was Wolves, think they would have opened Utd up every 2minutes on the counter just like they did before.
 
laughtersassassin said:
True. I didn't say sack him yet but this can't continue much longer at the current form. Like if this form continues across the next 7 for instance.

The main concern with ETH is this form coupled with the fact more of his signings seems to be misses than hits.
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Last year we were saying they were all hits...
Hard to judge Amrabat and Mount on a couple of games. Hojlund looks decent so far. Martinez is class. Casemiro was great, has gone off the boil dramatically but also is our top scorer. Erikson seems like he's toast but was good for a while last year.
Onana seems fine. Hasn't exactly transformed our play style like maybe we were hoping but it's early days yet.

We've effectively reset ourselves by making big changes to the squad so any progress made last season was wiped out.

I had no expectations for the league so I'm not really bothered if we're 10th for now. If we're 10th at Christmas that's a different story.
 
People have such low standards for what they consider a good performance.

We're nearly always going to be the better side against lower half opposition at Old Trafford.

We need to be creating clear cut guilt edged chances throughout the game. This reduces the chances you get "unlucky" and drop points in a game you think you've dominated. Barely a moment yesterday where I thought "he has to score there".

If that's the level of performance we consider good enough against bottom half teams at home then we're in for a very bad season.

These are the easier games on paper remember, if you can't put these teams to the sword then any away games or top half teams you can forget about picking up wins.
 
It was a weakened Palace team at home. We managed 4 shots on target, scoring 0, to Palace's 2 shots on target, scoring 1.

It's a comical performance worthy of a bottom half team.
 
evil_geko said:
if performances continue to be good, results will come.
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I’m witnessing the worst period ever, and then I discover a thread about improvement and talk about good performance :eek: Just to acknowledge we are on different planets.

…. or maybe ETH’s communication people are using this platform:p
 
laughtersassassin said:
We've lost 4 and won 3. Better performance or not doesn't matter.

It's sack worthy form and pretty much the only reason he isn't in trouble is because we've been though so many manager already
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It’s not sack worthy with context. It’s a shit time but there is credit from last year and as the OP said it wasn’t like we got dominated a la Wolves game. The form must improve and I think it will.
 
Polar said:
I’m witnessing the worst period ever, and then I discover a thread about improvement and talk about good performance :eek: Just to acknowledge we are on different planets.

…. or maybe ETH’s communication people are using this platform:p
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It was a good performance, wasn't amazing, great or anything, but good and if we used our chances, should have been 2, 3:1. They barely had any chances and scored from a rare amazing shot. I know this is becoming a pattern with us and our finishing, but people saying that was a bad performance are just wrong and influenced only by final result.
 
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As a one off game you can call it a bad day at the office, but it's another poor result in a string of poor results and that unfortunately is the context on which a team and a manager is going to be judged.

There were encouraging statistics of course, you can always find a few positives in life during bad situations. But ultimately it's palace at home and 3 points lost.

I see nothing to distinguish what we are actually trying to do. We look a mess. We are toothless and seem utterly clueless at times.

I remember watching us in preseason and seeing some worrying signs, and here we are today, a few weeks later, and we've not addressed them at all.
 
You can’t call a loss at home to palace a good performance. It wasn’t like one of those bizarre loses where you feel everything went against us like say Portsmouth in the FA cup in 2008 where it’s ridiculous we didn’t win. We weren’t good enough yesterday, not even close to the level required.
 
evil_geko said:
It was a good performance
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Can be nice and stretch to say it was a 5/10, descent or average performance.

We maybe had one or two good periods during the game, but in my view it wasn’t a good match in total.
 
Just watched the highlights again.

we allow palace to have 3-4 chances, while we have around 6.

None of our chances were clear cut. Mount has a fast cross which is hard to direct, Højlund’s a tough one to put in, Garnacho in the end has to shoot the ball through 3 lines of defenders. Bruno’s would’ve been good had he had the same “luck” as Andersen’s goal.

Then Palace had a big chance for a header in the first half which could easily have been a goal.

All in all it was an equal performance to me. Equalling Crystal Palace at home is just not good enough. We dont play with enough urgency, too litle recycling and too many touches compared to the big teams. And of course not clinical enough which has been the story of our performances for many years now.
 
Palace let us have the hall, quite rightly knowing that we carry little threat and there was a good chance they’d catch us on counter or get a chance for a set piece.

It was a really poor performance and it’s scraping the barrel to try and dress it up as anything better.
 
We were useless, never looked like scoring. I struggle to think how we could have been much worse.
 
This team has definitely got another 7-0 drubbing in them at some point and I think most of us already suspect that.
 
Roboc7 said:
Palace let us have the hall, quite rightly knowing that we carry little threat and there was a good chance they’d catch us on counter or get a chance for a set piece.

It was a really poor performance and it’s scraping the barrel to try and dress it up as anything better.
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Palace actually created much less than we did. They finished with 0.93 xg to our 1.96.

It wasn't a good performance but still there are positive signs imo.

Edit: we had the same xg as Villa who scored 6. Wow.
 
In one of the threads in this forum somebody stated before the game we would drop point whilst dominating possesion and doing sod all in the final third with it.....and that ETH would use that narrative.

It happened and he did and the OP is using a similar one. It is utter nonsense, as are the stats displayed in hi spost. The simpel truth is we created four chances over 90mins, the football isnt cohesive, it is negative and tumescent.

Talking of improvement is pretty comical, improvement on what being absolutely dreadful in nearly every game before?

The onyl valid point in the whole post is the injury problems we have suffered, every team has them but we have had a lot of them as well as off field problems....but that doesnt excuse what we are seeing, it is both frustrating and often boring watching our side for several of the seasons over the last decade.

We see owers, managers, infrastructure blamed.....how about the players.

Our two best players this season have been our right backs that have been both given a lot of stick over there time here (Dalot with me as well and are certainly not the most talented players in the side. Probably the best performance this season has been from someone who has come from the ranks making one of his first starts.

Yet time and time again we are seeing inconsistent performancesfrom bg players here and it has been the case from many of them for several seasons.

I think we have made huge errors in failing two sign a cb and a second cf this summer, but with a fully fit squad, we have a pretty good first eleven and squad in other areas. it is early in the season and things can change.....but anybody trusting that in a Man Utd managers second season when the there are still a good 6+ players that have let several managers down, must have a short memory.

Talking of improvment in a dire performances, seriously the standards people are getting used to not just individually but as a team, its sad to read
 
andersj said:
There was a few poor individual performances. I think Amrabat made a few significant errors that I hope he will learn from (a few freekicks, including the one for their goal, the turnover where Casemiro was booked among them). Beside that, Crystal Palace barely got a sniff and created feck all.

We actually created a few good chances. We had a xg of 1,6. The same tally as Villa yesterday. And obviouly, that do not include the huge chance that we where robbed and that should have been a penalty. We are not good enough to ensure that we always win these type of games, but most often we would.

I also think the underlying stats were good. We had 290 touches in the attacking third. 44 in the penalty area. CP had 74 and 10. Last sesson we never had more than 279/35 touches in the attacking third/penalty area (against Bmth). Bmth had 119/20 that game.

In terms of possession it was one of our most dominate displays on the ball for the past few years. Maybe even the most dominate if you exclude games like the one against Southampton where they went down one man early.

I’m not saying it was a great game by Man Utd at any measure. We should have created more. We should not have made those errors. But we have four fullbacks and our most influential CB on the ball out injured. Lacking both Shaw and Martinez is a huge blow for our build up play.

Considering all the injuries and noise the first few months I think we did ok yesterday. We should have done better, but it was an improved display from that Burnley game.
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I don't know about that - I thought we looked much better in the mid-week game, playing a number of players who don't usually play, and perhaps more importantly, not playing a few who have been very underwhelming lately.
 
Our fan base deserves few more 7-0s before they wake up and smell the coffee.
 
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