When Arsenal play Fulham, they lose 1-0 away and draw 0-0 at home. Man UTD resting players as opposed to them being injured spank them 4-0 in a ridiculously casual manner.
Man UTD's wage bill isn't that much bigger than ours
Lol is Mr Burns directly pumping nuclear waste into the Fulham water supply? That kid was freaaaaky...
Yup, basically its embarassing, and yet more proof of what I've been saying our key problem was. What one section of the field ran rings around us in both games, while were completely non existant in this game. The midfield, Danny Murphy was easily MOTM against us, i forget if he was as good in the first game tbh but the last one he rarely if ever lost the ball.
Today he was taken off for the hope someone could do better, people lately have been saying Arsenal don't need a DM and thats not our problem because Man U are doing fine and they don't have one, except for the fact that they do.
THe first thing a DM does, his first job, his key job that surpasses anything else is KEEPING THE DAMN BALL. INadvertantly Anderson, Scholes and Carrick(especially the last two) rarely, really really rarely give the ball away. The thing is you pass it to Carrick and you KNOW the ball will make it somewhere upfield, which means Evra/whoevers at right back know its safe to edge forwards, which means you've got a massive attack ready to go. With Arsenal you give it to one of the two in the middle and everyones worried how long it will be till you concede, we can't keep the ball, we give it away needlessly. We don't commit wingbacks as often as we used to because thats cost us so many times because they'll head upfield and Song will give it away and we'll be short at the back.
Carrick, Anderson, hell, even Scholes has improved his tackling this year(largely by being slow so getting forwards less, which leads to less tackling from behind). Anyone Man U stick in midfield is capable of tackling, but again thats not the key thing for a DM, watch Makelele or Gilberto, its about not taking yourself out of the game and cutting off the angles for the easy through ball. Because Carrick is a great at finding a throughball himself, he knows where to stand to cut off his opposite doing the same thing. Carrick and Scholes read the game SO WELL offensively, they can use that same reading of the game to defend well also and be where they need to be. So its crap Man U don't have a decent DM, they have about 6 all told.
They didn't give the very decent Fulham midfield an inch today and destroyed them, we gave them miles of room to wade into and they could easily have won.
WE're playing kids who aren't good at football in our midfield and everytime we've been up against anyone remotely confident our midfield dissappears. Hopefully Totti is still semi injured so Roma aren't any good again, or we're screwed.
