Greenlizard0 Weekend Football Thread ** spoilers ** [31st October - 5th November 2014]

Honestly if you let the comments of a poster on a random forum who isn't personally attacking you in some way get you down or raise your blood pressure re football then there must be something wrong.

you have one opinion, i may have another. I don't need to block anyone just because their view differs. How else could there be discussion?
 
Maybe it's because at the time, a RB wasn't the most pressing matter in the squad, and midfield is where you really needed improvement. Rafael is decent. Which is more than can be said for any midfielder you had last season.

We've needed a rb for 2 years. At least. Anyone who missed this either though valencia was a good rb or that rafael wasn't injury prone. Of course people with this viewpoint should be considered a bit suspect in their judgement.

Not only is he hazardous to himself his recklessness is also a cause for concern. Like rojojo. He injured himself with a rafaelesque challenge nowhere near the ball and a certain red card if he'd made contact with their player.
 
The reason I don't buy the **** players argument is that United's away record was as good as anyones last season, it was the poor home form where they were unable to break dogged teams down that cost them.

Interesting point. Also interesting is the reversal this season.

As it stands, Utd would be a respectable 5th in the table on home form this year but a dismal 16th on away form. This time last year Moyes' team would have been 10th on home form but 3rd on away form.

I guess the question of why LvG is so bad away from home is as pertinent as the question of why Moyes struggled to match his away from home.

Man Utd have troubles. I suspect LvG's record will mean that he gets given time to turn it around rather than being dumped after he delivers a poor result at the end of this season as he seems likely to.
 
Interesting point. Also interesting is the reversal this season.

As it stands, Utd would be a respectable 5th in the table on home form this year but a dismal 16th on away form. This time last year Moyes' team would have been 10th on home form but 3rd on away form.

I guess the question of why LvG is so bad away from home is as pertinent as the question of why Moyes struggled to match his away from home.

I think that's just down to the fact that Moyes didn't have the tactics to break teams down when they parked the bus, hence not being able to score and win as many games at home where teams did this. On the road when teams were more attacking we could hit them on the break and score but we also had the defence to cover against more attacks.

This season is the opposite, our defence is crap so we concede lots of goals when teams attack us, however we have some more skill upfront to unlock defences at home (a la Di Maria)
 
Its not that he didn't have the tactics, he just didn't have good enough personel.

Carrick, cleverly, valencia...how do you play good posession football against good teams with those 3 players stinking out the midfield?

carrick 1 goal no assists
clevo 1 goal no assists
valencia 2 goals 3 assist
 
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How many times did Utd drop points due to not being able to break down stubborn defences at home? Fulham is the only game I can think of and even then, you scored twice and what cost you was your defence if anything.

West Brom, Newcaslte, Everton and Spurs (and Sunderland but I can't remember that game) all won at OT but they hardly parked the bus. They were all good value for their wins and while Southampton equalised late on, it was hard to say they didn't deserve it.

Utd's record against the bottom 10 was bettered only by Arsenal last season. They had no problems beating the smaller sides that parked the bus. It was their record against the better sides in the league where they struggled.
 
As it stands, Utd would be a respectable 5th in the table on home form this year but a dismal 16th on away form. This time last year Moyes' team would have been 10th on home form but 3rd on away form.

I guess the question of why LvG is so bad away from home is as pertinent as the question of why Moyes struggled to match his away from home.

IMO United's defence is just poorer this season, they've only kept 2 clean sheets in the league and those were against Burnley & QPR. LvG has had to rebuild the defence he didn't have the luxury of inheriting Vidic, Ferdinand, Evra etc.
 
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Their defence at home last season was as good as the season before when they won the title:

12/13 Home
W16 D0 L3 F45 A19

13/14 Home
W9 D3 L7 F29 A21

12/13 Away
W12 D5 L2 F41 A24

13/14 Away
W10 D4 L5 F35 A22

Going by statistics goalscoring at home where teams tended to set themselves out for an away point was their major stumbling block.
 
To be fair goal scoring dropped across the board (because we had no CM to speak of and couldn't keep hold of the ball), although it did drop more significantly at home, which is probably most likely.

Utd also have played better on the counter attack for a few years - which suits the away team a little better (for the most part).
 
Just watched Gary Neville's analysis of RvP on MNF, that our players aren't playing nearly enough through balls to find him. His runs have been very good but he does need to do more still. Another good point made was that Di Maria hasn't been as effective playing out wide, so he needs bringing back inside.

If we can get people fit I'd like to see us line up similar to Real Madrid last season:

---Herrera-Blind-Di Maria---
RvP------Falcao------Rooney

Obviously with RvP and Rooney in wider positions they'd be playing as inside forwards, cutting inside where possible and making runs in behind. Whether this will work or not is questionable, but I can't see why it wouldn't. We can build up the pitch using our midfield and wouldn't require a great amount of pace, the movement should be plenty good enough. Januzaj could fill one of these positions, and Mata could slot in somewhere if we needed to break down a packed defence. Rooney can cross quite well with both feet (but rarely finds himself wide to do so), and would track back and cover defensively.

I think this might work better as despite all the praise, our attack needs adjusting as it's not creating enough clear chances at the moment.
 
I think rvp has missed Herrera's build up play and good accurate (central) passing in the last few games

The quality of the ball he has been getting hasn't been great vs Chelsea or in the derby
 
Herrera has been hugely missed, for sure. Any ideas as to when he's back?

Actually, wasn't he on the bench last night?
 
Is there a Europe thread being set up? If you believe the rumours Liverpool are going for lols tonight. No Sterling or Gerrard....

Well Sterling was gash against them at home and wanted countless attacks and gave away possession, we would've been better with just Mario.

Gerrard will be ****ed after 40 minutes, I wonder if Lucas will be doing the job as whoever it was against QPR playing Gerrard role in first half was worse than he's ever been.

We're getting spanked unless there's some miracle performance, had a better chance at home but pathetically wasteful
 
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