Carabao Cup - Round of 16 ** Spoilers ** [31st Oct - 1st Nov 2023]
- Thread starter explicit4u
- Start date
I said this at half time albeit without the stats to back it up. It's a trend against United where opposition teams seem to over index in their clinical finishing. Think back to Brighton and how they demolished us earlier in the year. Totally clinical on the counter whereas we are the opposite when we get a counter and realistically that is the only way we get near scoring at present. It suggests that we are too offensively set up and struggle to get a shape back after a turnover. A lot comes down to positional discipline which may or may not be a formational dilemma and the desire to accommodate a 4-3-3 with Rashford, Fernandes, Antony/Sancho, Garnacho, Hojlund. We are also stuck in a man marking way of setting up which is very uncommon now. I'm convinced ten Hag has tried to address this but the players just aren't up to it or don't want to change. It's conditioned behaviour for too many of them.People are making a little too much of last night. United were crap but Newcastle weren't exactly great. They were just absolutely clinical.
Only team that was more clinical was West Ham
Soldato
- Joined
- 21 Sep 2020
- Posts
- 4,400
Eye test tells a completely different story though.
Lots of things aren’t factors in xG so shouldn’t be taken as gospel.
Lots of things aren’t factors in xG so shouldn’t be taken as gospel.
Newcastle weren't great and we were crap. I watched the game and 2 of their three goals were absolute crackers that they would very rarely score and the first one was a good finish as well. Outside of that they didn't do that much.
So I don't think the eye test contradicts that xG. If Newcastle won 1-0 I wouldn't have thought they were short changed at all. We didn't deserve to win but they didn't deserve to win by 3 goals.
Honestly i dont think Newcastle needed to get out of second gear in the second half. They dominated in the first half, scored early in the second and it was like a friendly after that. United didnt seem remotely bothered so Newcastle didnt need to ever step up
We were on top at the start of the second half for 15 minutes and then, as usual we forgot that we needed to defend and put some base level of effort into defending and that was game over. I wouldn't have put it past us to get back in the game if that 3rd goal hadn't gone in.
It's almost like youve got an absolute muppet in goal if every team is outperforming their xg.....
That's not an unfair conclusion but having watched all the games I don't think it's root cause. Not saying Onana hasn't cost us some goals but I think it's more to do with an ability to regain formation and some slow defenders. That includes Martinez who played against Brighton.
Exactly. Daft that XG. What I'm picking up from here is that Newcastle are consistently out performing theirs (as most sides do against Man Utd, apparently) and Man Utd underperforming theirs aka set up too offensively.
If you are constantly outperforming against a stat that is supposed to indicate how you will perform then there's something wrong with it, no?
The Man Utd players are clearly playing for Ten Hag to get the sack. There's a bunch of them not putting a shift in backed up by that clown of a goalkeeper who makes the 1974 Zaire world cup side look competent and well organised premier league teams are having a field day against it.
No they don't. Most teams don't massively over-perform on their xG over a season otherwise xG would change...
Nketiah scored a couple of absolute screamers in his hat trick recently. He will go back to being bang average in front of goal again next game. Sometimes you just have one of those games. West Ham put 3 past Arsenal with an xG of 0.45. Some of that was awful goalkeeping but thats not normal.