He scored 12 in 34 or something the season before moving to Man U, not bad for a midfielder. He can have a role at the club, he's only had a handful of games though, hardly enough time to get back up to match fitness. He's always on the team sheet for Belgium as well.
UEFA Champions League/Europa League ** Spoilers ** [8/9/10 December 2015]
- Thread starter Cosimo
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Big difference between League Cup and EPL / CL though.
OShea and Brown were pretty decent centre backs in their prime, and while Phil didn't get anywhere near his brother's quality he was a very good utility player, so there is quality in that team (even if majority of the attacking side is pure ****). Howard was also a decent keeper when he was with us - he just never really developed while we had him.
Fellaini is completely worthless at Utd, lumbering oaf would be better on the team sheet. Even as a target man he is woefully inadequate at CL quality / going for a title.
Its also the case that even in those three - four years since the EPL has got better / tighter so just because he could do that scoring "record" that recently, doesn't mean he is likely to that ever again (and it could well have been a one off anyway, its not like he did that for 3 or 4 seasons consistently before moving).
Just because he is capped for his country has no relation what so ever that he should be anywhere near Utd's team sheet
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Caporegime
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I am old enough (don't worry, valid question) but I'd still argue Fellaini is worse than most of those (and some of those were never really first team members for us) The thing is even the worst players I can think of at Utd had something redeemable about them. Gibson was atrocious but every so often he would do an amazing long shot for example. Fellaini has no redeemable features. His passing is terrible, his tackling is terrible, his positioning is appalling, his aerial ability is terrible, he fouls a lot and is offside a ridiculous amount.
60 games over 3 seasons, in what world is that a handful of games?
Its hard to compare the two because one had less than a season and didn't buy many players and the other has had 1.5 seasons and spent a lot of money but Moyes would at the very least allow our players to play. With AdM and the like in the team that would be enough to beat most opposition.
LvG is choking creativity, making us play at a standard that is less than the sum of our parts and making bizarre squad choices and then making even stranger subs. The easy part of a managers job should be facing the media and what he projects to the outside. Its not as if you get the impression the players love him and support him.
Moyes was crap in that respect but mainly because he was still in the mindset of a smaller club and didn't quite understand the expectations put on him.
LvG thinks he is bigger than the club and that he is always right and won't even entertain the idea of doing things differently. When you are winning that is fine but as someone said, he is starting to sound like a Rogers stye nutter when he talks about how we performed and played. The disallowed goal last night was correctly disallowed, we are not dominating opposition and creating lots of chances.
An honest assessment of last nights game would be that we were outplayed, we defended poorly, we didn't attack very well and we picked a poor 1st XI then made even worse subs. We lost 3-2 but one of our goals was an OG that was a huge slice of luck. They could have scored another 3-4 goals quite easily and we could perhaps have scored another 2 if we finished really well.
Our formation, movement on and off the ball is dire and our tactics are negative and ineffectual against anyone half decent.
Last night I watched a very average looking Wolfsburg attack us easily, create space and beat a man regularly even when we had far more players in defence than they had in attack.
Watch the top teams and they have lots of players around the ball, they have options and they know what they are going to do and how they are going to do it. They overload one side of the pitch then switch play. We have our players spread over the pitch meaning that half the team is never involved in the game and when we do switch the play there are so few players on that side of the pitch that we have to wait for the team to move before doing anything. You might say how can you have few players around the ball and still have to wait for support when you switch it, surely there are more players over there but there aren't. The team is just evenly spread over the pitch.
We are super easy to defend against and impotent in attack. Its just generally rubbish to watch.
you are right he didn't buy many players............because players didn't want to play under Moyes
Still think the rule for the disallowed goal is very bizarre. If Mata touched the ball, then it would be offside - no question. the fact it goes behind his back for a split second 5 yards or whatever away from goal doesn't stop the gk covering the flight of the ball (unless he is physically obstructed, which he wasn't in this case). You might as well rule out every goal where the ball goes through players legs because they are interfering with play.
That's pretty harsh
If Mata had been onside for the Lingard goal just before half time , Utd would have gone in level at the very least. Not to mention at least two others that were saved on the line (Fellaini's header right at the keeper and there was another very good chance a few minutes after that). Utd should also have had someone on the near post for their first goal They did score three very good /well worked goals but even on the night Utd should have taken the chances that were there to be taken and it could easily have been 3 -4 (or 5)
Starting XI and subs were a catastrophic ******** however
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The issue with Mata is that you can't expect a keeper to be 100% sure that a player is offside in those situations so the keeper has to make a choice that he wouldn't if the player wasn't there. Its doubtful that Lingards shot would have gone in if the keeper had no distractions and didn't leave it so late to dive due to Matas position and potential to deflect the ball. These decisions are being made in a fraction of a second so if a player is effecting the keeper and is offside then it has to be a foul.
See above, I doubt it would have gone in without Matas "help".
Thats just good defending ultimately.
They had the better chances and more of them in the game. De Gea made some top saves compared to their keeper. We deserved to lose the game. Schurlle had a simple chance to put them ahead that he would score 8/10 easily in the first few minutes.
I think the people that are saying that we played quite well and deserved to win are just comparing the attacking intent in the game to our usual ultra conservative efforts and thinking that we played well and were just a little unlucky.
I don't know if LvG genuinely gave the team more freedom to attack or decided that our makeshift defence wasn't going to contain Wolfsburg anyway so we might as well attack but why we don't try to play at least a little more like that when we have a full team is baffling. It wasn't great but it wasn't as dull as we normally are and we have better players who can play attacking football.
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Caporegime
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Their chances were more clear cut than ours. We didn't do enough to win clearly.
Back to the drawing board.
Back to the drawing board.
This season i'm talking about, has he not just come back from injury?
Caporegime
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I have no idea, I assumed he'd just been rightly left out. 8 games is still 8 games too many he's played this season. He's had chance after chance and been terrible.
has he? how much did moyes spend and how far did he get in the cl?
they generally cant play together, Walcott is wasted out wide which is where he will play with giroud in the team
he should either be as central striker starting or come on as impact sub
Yeah, exactly, need 2 goals. Need to attack from the off...
Caporegime
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What? Literally Walcott's only genuinely good season for Arsenal was 12/13, where he played exclusively wide and with Giroud starting all season. He was absolutely beyond dire as a central striker this season. He has 2 goals in 27 shots, been utterly isolated playing centrally and offered absolutely nothing at all to the team while playing centrally.
Walcott has never looked worse than playing centrally for Arsenal and his only good season was spent playing wide to Giroud.
Why do you look at shots?
He's started 8 times as forward, scored 3 assisted 3..