By the way, Steve Bates is probably the most reliable person for United info this season, I follow him on twitter. 100% record for line-ups, injury news and all, he's getting lots of solid info from someone at the club.
United under LvG: verdict so far!
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The Netherlands in the World Cup were horrid to watch. Everywhere else, he's been about attack.
There were mitigating circumstances for that. As there are, arguably, this season too.
Give him a summer to fine tune his squad, next season we'll see what he's been working towards.
Amen.
Only saw highlights for this game, Young looked fantastic tho.
Yesterday I went to see Cardiff City get beaten by Wolves. Believe me, anyone who thinks we have it tough with boring football, you should try walking in a Cardiff fan's shoes. Feck me.
Yesterday I went to see Cardiff City get beaten by Wolves. Believe me, anyone who thinks we have it tough with boring football, you should try walking in a Cardiff fan's shoes. Feck me.
Holland were actually really boring in the world cup, even with Robben shining. The Spain game stayed in everyone's minds but they were really boring after that - and boring in the same way we are right now.
When was the last time Van Gaal had a team playing really good football consistently? Genuine question as I don't know.
Good question, His Bayern team were quite good, his Holland side were quite good to watch until he lost Strootman and went into pragmatic mode, because he had to. You look at that Holland team and it's littered with average players, to be fair, Van Gaal did what he had to do to get results with them. I expected more because we have better players, so far he hasn't delivered on that, but we'll see.
Bayern for a period? I certainly didn't have Holland in mind when I said that. Maybe you have to go back a long way but we all knew his big successes came a long time ago.
Amen. If it hadnt been for peno we would not have broken them down. Sunderland were quite comfortable for the majority of game.
An efficient striker would be great, but a funcitioning midfield creating chance is must too.
It seems we have watched different games. Okay we did struggle in the final 3rd but I never doubted for a second we wouldn't grab the win. But it is bollocks to say "without the pen we wouldn't have won". If Oshea did not pull Falcao he most likely would have scored. It was good attacking play and we deserved the goal. Criticism on ifs make no sense, if we'd had Robben we would have won by a bigger margin, that shit makes no sense. We forced the penalty and the red, it was not that the wind scored the goals for us.
30 attempts to their 5
553 passes to their 145
75% possession to their 25%
65% territory to their 35%
12/26 take ons compared to their 5/11
13/39 crosses compared to their 2/3
9/13 corners compared to their 1/1
2 goals compared to their 0
I'm sorry you didn't enjoy watching it and all that but it's time to stop talking absolute bollocks about there being nothing good and all being based on luck.
The first half wasn't great but he made the correct changes and over the whole 90 minutes we absolutely bent them over backwards, controlled the play, dictated the tempo and created opportuinity after opportunity. It's as comfortable and dominating a display as you'll see in this league.
Exactly, I already said it before but how is it possible people saying it was that bad and won because of luck. For once we looked decently comfortable on the ball, the balltempo we had I havent seen in a long long time, we controlled and gave little away. There have been awful games this season, but sometimes I just feel people slating everything for the sake of it.
People just see what they want to see. Yesterday's performance was very watchable. Not breathtakingly end to end, but people that are expecting us to play that are in dreamland.
I just read Noodle say we played "significantly better football" under Moyes last season, so it's probably best not to take his statements too seriously. If anyone really thinks we were "awful" yesterday, then I don't think they're going to get much enjoyment out of watching us anymore.
Short memories and the bizarre rewriting of history never ceases to amaze me when it comes to football fans.
The qualifying campaign for the WC was good to watch, 4-3-3 with lots of movement off the ball, quick decision making, one touch or two touch. Also the Netherlands at the WC could do with a bit of a balanced view. Certainly there were boring spells in matches, and it wasn't as exciting attacking football as one might expect. But to be honest it hasn't been since euro 2000, so those expectations were based on the fact that Van Gaal was the manager and on the qualifying with Strootman. In terms of attacking football, the Brazil game for 3rd was as good as any match in a WC or EC since 2000. Not because it was brilliant, but because the attractive attacking free flowing total football from the Dutch has become a bit of a myth since the late nineties. The more exciting matches inbetween were with quite defensive counter-attacking tactics.
Basically I think he's just behind on his own schedual because of two particularities of the PL. The first is the pace and fysicality of the game, the players are in the process of learning the right decision making, and they should decide as quickly as possible, even before they recieve the ball or another player recieves the ball and there has to be made a run. It players at the beginnen take more time for that, in the PL it means trouble because they have less time, and automatically leads to a confidence issue. The other thing is that in the PL players tend to play more instinctively, and think less. He has to get more thinking into their instinct or more instinct into their thinking, and that's of course a difficult job that takes a lot of drilling.
The job showed so difficult it got even me wondering whether he could pull it off in England at all, because the learning process comes wiht lack of confidence and lack of confidence is the enemy of quick decision making, and even more so for speeding up decision making. But yersterday I saw signs of progress in the speed of decision making, it was back at the level of the first half against Tottenham. If confidence doesn't fall again, it might get enjoyable at the end of the season.
See this is and has constantly been the problem with the pro Van Gaal arguments...you put up a load of silly stats then come up with some ridiculous comments that are based on a complete fantasy like "It's as comfortable and dominating a display as you'll see in this league", or "we're improving with every game"
We won because of a penalty and a red card. Before that point we'd created the grand total of 1 chance...which was when a Sunderland player kicked the ball against his own crossbar. Last week, Man City beat a better team than Sunderland 5-0 without the scoreline even slightly flattering them...but no, our win yesterday was as convincing as that, or anything anyone else has done all season. Ok then.
Basically, you're just completely making shit up.
Here's some more:
Presumably no one watched a single Bayern game when Van Gaal was in charge...despite two of them being against us.
They played much like we do now.
The changes in our performances that some of you have decided are imminent (despite also deciding this about 6 months ago) are not going to happen. The way we play is how Van Gaal wants us to. That's why it's the same every week.
There's the whole narrative of us playing "bad" football at the moment and it's not fair at all.
It's all twisted from people's perceptions. On the one hand there is bad football like the Southampton game or the Leicester game. Genuinely bad football where we deserved all we got.
On the other there's "bad football" that is better defined as "boring football". Refusing a low percentage cross into a box containing Falcao and 4 6ft+ defensive opposition and instead choosing to pass the ball backwards until it reaches De Gea and recycles the play isn't "bad" football. It's a way of playing football that some might not enjoy but it's not "bad".
So when we win 3-1 against Burnley and 2-0 against QPR while having 60% possession, twice as many shots on target and twice as many passes, just because some people don't enjoy the fashion in which we do it in doesn't mean we are playing "badly".
Precisely. This season I'm actually looking forward to matches, even if performances have been a mixed bag.
I'd argue that the games away to Leverkusen, Villa, West Ham, West Brom and Newcastle last season were as watchable, if not more so, than anything we've produced this season. I don't know what to make of Van Gaal at the moment, I really don't enjoy the way we play and our results have flattered us but his CV and reputation suggests he does have a plan. It's just hard to gather what it is at the moment, looks more like he's chopping and changing the team and the tactics as he's desperately trying to find a way to improve the performances.
You're probably the most whiney person I've ever come across on a forum. You moaned through Fergies title winning years and now your moaning before Van Gaal has even finished his first season. You moaned all last year about Moyes and now you claim we are playing worse despite improvements over last year that are obvious to even the most pessimistic posters.
What exactly are you expecting when you support United? Season after season of beautiful attacking football that wins trophy after trophy without the boring developmental stages in between? Get in the real world.
When we won last season is was generally much more entertaining than anything we've done in any game this season.
This season, when we win, we still look shite. Everyone ends the game in a bad mood. It's become the norm.
When we went on a run of 7 wins (or whatever it was), the narrative instead of "we've finally turned the corner" was "the performances will get better"...they haven't. Pretending they have doesn't really work...and will probably start to look silly when we go into that difficult run of fixtures we have coming up.
This season, when we win, we still look shite. Everyone ends the game in a bad mood. It's become the norm.
When we went on a run of 7 wins (or whatever it was), the narrative instead of "we've finally turned the corner" was "the performances will get better"...they haven't. Pretending they have doesn't really work...and will probably start to look silly when we go into that difficult run of fixtures we have coming up.
Oshea prevented a goal with that interception, otherwise Young would have scored. Talking About making shit up, framing it that way is pure bollocks. Same goes for the penalty and red card it was because of a good play, it is part of the game, otherwise Falcao most likely would have put it away. What has our game yesterday to do with City' game? Absolutely nothing. We won at home versus Burnely while City drawed so obviously we are better, so this makes City a worse than us? Ofcourse not it says feck all
There's a balance to be had, both this season and last. But there is an element of Moyes in all of this. People trying to justify their thoughts from last year, or retaliating against the perceived injustices that had fallen the manager and his coaching staff last season. That anger and irritation spills over in this season, whereby an attention-seeking poster once calling for time now thinks that the current manager should have already lost his job by now.
We're further up the table, much harder to beat, in the quarter finals of the FA Cup and playing with a set idea for the first time in a long while. Disliking our style of play is more than fine. The tempo, or lack of, has been an issue. Van Gaal has made a long list of errors thus far, many of which I've been on his back for. But the idea that this season is currently anything like last is short-sighted, biased, overly-dramatic and downright negative.
The forum was in a buoyant mood yesterday. Just look at the players threads. Blind getting good reviews, Herrera, Smalling, Januzaj, Young, Valencia, De Gea for his save. 7 out of 11 players getting positive reviews.
Thanks.
I didn't moan all last year about Moyes...just after Christmas when everyone else was moaning too.
I don't like fantasy arguments...like the one you just made, which when confronted on you have to defend by having a go at me instead of being able to actually defend it. Because it was basically a lie.
We have played poorly all season...take that out of the context of it being a "moan" and it still remains true. People who arent even United fans are constantly saying it.
I would moan about Fergie a bit but when I thought he got things wrong. The same with Moyes. The difference with Van Gaal is he gets loads of things wrong, every week...then he comes out and blames it on the players not listening to him. Then he comes out and talks shite before each game, often putting down his own players again. Like this week when he used the pre-match conference to slag off his strikers...even though he's barely used one correctly and plays another in midfield nearly every week. He is full of self preserving bullshit and it irks me when people just blindly lap it up.
Put the same performances we've had this season under Moyes and there'd probably be death threats aimed at him on here by now.
Again you're just making up an argument to suit I don't even know what.
We didn't play well yesterday. We laboured to a win against a relegation bound team who offered no threat apart from when we tried to pass their striker through on goal for them.
I've got nothing to defend, you dismiss it as a fantasy argument because you disagree. I'm not going to reword it and argue back and forth with you, it's a waste of time, you've made your mind up on him.
He's getting loads of things wrong, while we sit in 3rd competing with teams that have blown the same amount of money or more than us while their managers are in their 2nd or 3rd years with a settled squad and Van Gaal is in his first year with a squad that saw almost half its players leave in the summer.
You're not enjoying how we play football so you're throwing your toys out the pram and are refusing to judge the performances objectively.
Hold on you guys, for goodness sake! You can't start posting sensible, positive, rational and balanced posts here. You should all know better
Ok. That's your opinion and I really can't be bothered to argue with it. Just read though the last few pages, you're in the minority.
Out of interest when was the last time you genuinely enjoyed watching United? Which seasons?
We only started to play with some confidence after going into the lead, and a man up. It looked pleasing on the eye due to Adnan and Young adding some swagger to the team.
I actually didn’t think the first half was that bad either. It seems some just don’t want to see the improvement in the team that was clearly visible in the Sunderland game, I’ve been as harsh as anybody on LVG but as much as I criticise him I still trust him and today’s game is an example of why I’m still on board. He made very good substitutions, his game plan clearly worked and we dominated a team that got the better of us last year.
The mentality of the team was spot on as was the fluidity. Sunderland were playing with a flat back four and their midfield barely crossed the half way line.
Hmm, sometimes I wonder if Van Gaal's name being synonymous with Barca and Bayern enforces a view that we'll end up like that just by having him here...and well we might.
But there are other factors too, like Barca being blessed with Xavi, Iniesta and Messi (after Van Gaal left in Messi's case, but I'm talking about Van Gaal getting credit for laying the foundations that saw their incredible football), Bayern being in an uncompetitive league.
And of course Guardiola is actually the manager that has got the best out of both these teams.
Perhaps it's a bit unrealistic of us to expect too much out of Van Gaal if the last time he had a team playing consistently brilliant football was many years ago?
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This is key and I think it comes down to everyone using a different measuring stick.
For me, for this season at least, I'm looking for simple cases of us out playing our opposition. More possession, more chances, more goals, more passes ect ect and we are doing just that.
For other people and I suspect Noodle is one of these, they are looking for improvements in style and entertainment value. Faster play, more dribbles, more speculation, more shots, more crosses and just generally more excitement.
I think all that will come in time but right now pragmatism is our best route to the top 4. We are playing better than the majority of our opponents, it's that simple.
Correct about three first half. Sunderland did well to contain us, but we still controlled the game, and it's only Di Maria's decision making errors that is clouding people's judgment.
Van Gaal had nothing to do with Messi though.
I think we will have to wait until next season for the pure entertainment. People should realise he is giving the current players a chance to prove their worth. He will bring more players in the summer to suit the style of football he wants. This season was always going to be a problem. You cannot just go out and bring in every player you want in one go and this was one big rebuilding job.
No, I meant the football that followed and Van Gaal being credited with laying the foundations for it.
I've edited that post so it makes a bit more sense.
Yeah, found it a tad puzzling people suggesting van Gaal laid the foundations for Guardiola's great success.
It really wasn't "much more entertaining" at all. We had some decent matches in between some pretty horrid ones. And if we're in a bad mood this season we were fecking suicidal last year.
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