UEFA Champions League/Europa League ** Spoilers ** [8/9/10 December 2015]

Great Champions league evening last night.

City were very poor in the first half chasing shadows and not getting out of second gear. Then came out second half a totally different team, high pressing forcing mistakes and creating chance after chance.

Delph has really impressed me so far, such energy. Him and Fenandinho could prove to be a really good partnership in midfield.

Hopefully the other EPL teams can do the business tonight.
 
Why would we do that. The man is a nutter and unless there is something seriously wrong behind the scenes there is no reason to give him a new contract. He will have had 2 seasons, 4 transfer windows and spent a huge amount of money and barely improved us on the pitch at all.

I know there is a minority of United fans that say that LvG is playing in this way due to the players he has at his disposal and our defensive minded style is because he doesn't have the personnel to play attacking football but if that was the case then he should have bought the players to achieve that.
 
My hope is that they are publicly backing LvG while privately sounding out Pep. Anything other than backing LvG would probably unsettle him and the squad and potentially cost us CL football next year, seeing as it's hanging in the balance at the moment anyway.

I think the United board need to be ruthless. If that means getting rid of LvG a year early and paying off his remaining contract, so be it. Also, do we really want LvG to have another £100+ million to spend next summer? I don't trust him to be able to spend the money properly, and I don't think players really want to come and play for him. If we had Pep we'd immediately be a more attractive proposition to the best players in the world.
 
nicktay2605 said:
I think the United board need to be ruthless. If that means getting rid of LvG a year early and paying off his remaining contract, so be it. Also, do we really want LvG to have another £100+ million to spend next summer? I don't trust him to be able to spend the money properly, and I don't think players really want to come and play for him. If we had Pep we'd immediately be a more attractive proposition to the best players in the world.
Click to expand...

Thats one of the big benefits of having one of the top managers in the world manage you, the top players will come simply for the manager. They have also quite often managed a lot of top players that they can potentially persuade to join you.

I'm still not convinced by Pep as he hasn't managed anyone other than the top top teams in the world at their absolute peak yet. I don't know if he has improved Bayern either. They were ruthless and efficient before he took over and now they feel a little less dangerous but more likely to choke an opposition to death.

I would love to see Simeone given a chance with us as his style is great to watch and he seems to get the most out of limited resources so it would be interesting to see how he does with a big budget.
 
fez said:
Thats one of the big benefits of having one of the top managers in the world manage you, the top players will come simply for the manager. They have also quite often managed a lot of top players that they can potentially persuade to join you.

I'm still not convinced by Pep as he hasn't managed anyone other than the top top teams in the world at their absolute peak yet. I don't know if he has improved Bayern either. They were ruthless and efficient before he took over and now they feel a little less dangerous but more likely to choke an opposition to death.

I would love to see Simeone given a chance with us as his style is great to watch and he seems to get the most out of limited resources so it would be interesting to see how he does with a big budget.
Click to expand...

I think people forget that Bacelona where no-where near the dominant force they became under Pep when he started, in his first season he got rid of 6 to 7 first team players and brought in almost the same. He overhauled that squad in his first season and while it was not in the same state as the UTD team right now he certainly has the ability to rejuvenate a disappointing side.

Not that I think he'd come to us anyway but he's the stand out choice if available, Simone may be a decent shout but his brand of football isnt' that great, its efficient but it certainly is not 'attack attack attack'.

LVG has done some good, he's removed some of the dead wood in the squad and we do have some exciting young players in the team now and a better midfield then we've had in years, he's just made some poor choices in other area's (squad depth, lack of strikers and not adding to the defence properly) and he can't seem to get the best out the squad for some reason.

He does need replacing but it has to be done right.
 
Last edited:
MooMoo444 said:
Why are poeple against LVG so much? He's still cleaning up the Moyes mess.
Click to expand...

He's really not. He's improved us but now it's 1 step forward and 2 steps back. Last night needing to win he takes of Juan Mata and brings on Nick Powell....a guy who hasn't played for us for over a year. The guy is just a terrible decision maker in matches. His lineups and subs are ridiculously poor. Fellaini is playing 90 mins every match despite being utter crap.
 
He improved us from 'terrible' to 'borderline acceptable', but its been 18 months now we are barely playing any better then when he first started.

The thing is if we were showing signs of improvement, playing better football and looked like his 'vision' had promise yet we where in exactly the same position league and in Europe he'd be under a lot less pressure.

You can't manage a 'big' club, achieve the absolute bare minimum requirements AND play terrible football and get away with it for two years. The clean up job after Moyes was not THAT big.
 
Yeah but juan mata himself was a waste of 37 million. Who would you rather have, Draxler or juan 'it doesn't' Mata? For example?

What beat us last night? Players with a bit of skill and a bit of pace and quality. A midfield of carrick, schweini, schneiderlin, mata, fellaini etc does not provide the dynamic fluidity we need or want to see as fans.

Take martial out of the lineup and we are lacking players who offer that. We see fleeting glimpses from some young players like depay but not enough. Not enough to take the game to wolfsburg. Or Leicester city.

This is a concern and has been for a significant amount of time.
 
Sorry but Mata is one of the best #10's in the league plus a midfeild of Mata, Herrera and Schneiderlin/Schweinstiger is more then dynamic enough for a UTD midfield, the issue is the complete lack of cohesion our manager is able to generate between them and the rest of the team.

If they leave their assigned roles too much then our lack of quality in defence gets exploited and we get beaten 3 - 2, if they stick to it then we draw 0 - 0 as none of our forward players are either in the form or ready to be able to regularly win matches by themselves.
 
MooMoo444 said:
Why are poeple against LVG so much? He's still cleaning up the Moyes mess.
Click to expand...

Come off it how many transfer windows and time did the pair of them have? Moyes didn't bring in that much crap and LVG has spent more than enough to be able to make improvements in how the team plays. Hell if he spent nothing from moyes United squad he could have improved that. The football is terrible and will always be terrible while the dinosaur stays there.

Roy Hodgson would have them playing more exiting attacking football. Ship out and move on now for next season.
 
fez said:
Thats one of the big benefits of having one of the top managers in the world manage you, the top players will come simply for the manager. They have also quite often managed a lot of top players that they can potentially persuade to join you.

I'm still not convinced by Pep as he hasn't managed anyone other than the top top teams in the world at their absolute peak yet. I don't know if he has improved Bayern either. They were ruthless and efficient before he took over and now they feel a little less dangerous but more likely to choke an opposition to death.

I would love to see Simeone given a chance with us as his style is great to watch and he seems to get the most out of limited resources so it would be interesting to see how he does with a big budget.
Click to expand...

I don't really like Simeone. Yes he's done a fantastic job at Atletico, but he is similar in style to Mourinho. It's solid, effective, physical football but it's not particularly pretty to watch and certainly not what I'd call attacking. For me, the only options are Pep or Ancelotti.
 
I would say that at this point, with the amount of money we have spent, Moyes would have us playing better football. Moyes issue was that he didn't improve the squad when given the chance, had a small club mentality and didn't play good football. The football he played was still better than what LvG has us playing though.

We don't have to settle for a manager like LvG either. I have no idea what the board have planned but I really hope they are sounding out other managers for the end of the season unless LvG really pulls his finger out.

I would take a number of managers over LvG right now and I think all of them would do a better job and be far more successful than LvG will ever be.
 
nicktay2605 said:
My hope is that they are publicly backing LvG while privately sounding out Pep. Anything other than backing LvG would probably unsettle him and the squad and potentially cost us CL football next year, seeing as it's hanging in the balance at the moment anyway.

I think the United board need to be ruthless. If that means getting rid of LvG a year early and paying off his remaining contract, so be it. Also, do we really want LvG to have another £100+ million to spend next summer? I don't trust him to be able to spend the money properly, and I don't think players really want to come and play for him. If we had Pep we'd immediately be a more attractive proposition to the best players in the world.
Click to expand...

or Ancelotti, either would be a good move at the moment.

fez said:
I would say that at this point, with the amount of money we have spent, Moyes would have us playing better football. Moyes issue was that he didn't improve the squad when given the chance, had a small club mentality and didn't play good football. The football he played was still better than what LvG has us playing though.
Click to expand...

Would De Gea have re-signed if Moyes was still in charge (and its questionable if we would have made top 4 under him last season), I would very much doubt it.

He certainly wouldn't have been able to sign Schweini - although I'm not sure that would be such a big loss (he has done well in a few games, but quite a number of ones have really passed him by badly).

Some of the football Moyes had the team playing was equally bad just a different variety of bad.

People are making too much of the money already spent - look at Chelsea, look at City both having spent similar amounts in the same time frame and they aren't dramatically better than Utd this season (over all games played). Put it another way Utd have over £110m of that money out injured at the moment (Shaw, Herrera, Rojo, Schneiderlin & Darmian - latter only lasting sub 30 minutes last night)

Don't forget Shaw being hacked down in the first group game (quite a few refs coming out, incl Collina, since then stating it should have been a red and penalty as it was far too forceful/ out of control) while he was playing brilliantly over a number of games prior to that. Probably the biggest loss over the season, plus Herrera who is frustratingly ignored by LvG all the time even when he isn't injured. The result of that first game hinged on that dubious decision / injury.

PSV at home was dreadfully mediocre as Utd have been in the EPL recently (well for majority of the season it has to be said)
 
Last edited:
I'm not convinced he had us playing better football. He brought in Fellaini, one of the worst players I've ever seen in United's first team squad. He played Valencia at right back for basically an entire season. He again didn't use Kagawa at all. Mata has done well but that felt more despite what Moyes was doing with him (remember the legendary 6000 crosses game?)

I think Moyes was incompetent on and off the pitch (yet bizarrely did ok in Europe) where as LvG has done fairly well off the pitch but he's not good on matchday.
 
Shamikebab said:
I'm not convinced he had us playing better football. He brought in Fellaini, one of the worst players I've ever seen in United's first team squad. He played Valencia at right back for basically an entire season. He again didn't use Kagawa at all. Mata has done well but that felt more despite what Moyes was doing with him (remember the legendary 6000 crosses game?)

I think Moyes was incompetent on and off the pitch (yet bizarrely did ok in Europe) where as LvG has done fairly well off the pitch but he's not good on matchday.
Click to expand...

Not that I'm denying Fellaini is way below the standard we need right now but I once watched a UTD team of Howard, O'Shea, Brown, P.Neville, Fortune, Djemba-Djemba, Liam Miller, Kiren Richardson, Chris Eagles, Kleberson and David Bellion beat arsenal 1 - 0 in the LC.

Now I've no idea how old you are so you may not have seen any of though guys play, but Fellaini head and sholders above some of these guys (physically and ability wise) and he does have his uses, just not how he's being used right now and not in the first 11.

edit. re-read this and it came across as a little patronising, wasn't intended to be! I agree but Fellaini isn't that bad, he at least has a bit of fight about him, he just shouldn't be a starter for us.
 
Last edited:
PayneUK said:
Now I've no idea how old you are so you may not have seen any of though guys play, but Fellaini head and sholders above some of these guys (physically and ability wise) and he does have his uses, just not how he's being used right now and not in the first 11.
Click to expand...

That was one of the 4 games he was decent that year. He was terrible at Everton but seemed to show up at the right times against big teams and get headlines the next day. Like against Chelsea, Manu and Arsenal. Rest of the season he was dire. I actually never thought we would get our money back on him or even 2/3rds of what we paid. He's not a Manu player.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom