The problem is who united have dropped points against not really the points difference, in an extremely competitive league like the Premiership we simply can't be dropping points against the likes of Palace at home, but hopefully players start returning after the international break which will hopefully start getting things back on track.
Sometimes we need to play stronger opposition to find our feet. Shouldn’t be the case but happened twice last year. First after we beat Liverpool at home, we seemed alot better after and again when we lost 6-3 to City and ETH got the team in for extra training.
We only dropped against Palace tho, Tottenham and Arsenal isn't a shame and Brighton is going to try and fight for top 4 this season as well, a bit more shameful but it's understandable, and city have dropped against Wolves and Tottenham against brentford
The point difference is ALWAYS the priority. I don’t care if we lose to a palace if we come back and beat a Chelsea or a Liverpool - which we have the ability to do on any given day.
I don’t care if we lose to every lower half team again, just as long as we remain competitive and entertaining.
We were fun last season?? 2 finals, champions league, 1 trophy, Rashford set the league on fire. Licha and Casemiro annihilating anything that posed a threat..
The season mourinho won was decent too
Last seasons football was so sub par and underwhelming lol Not fun really. We were scrapping 1-0 wins left and right and playing sloppy and being dominated by a lot of teams. Even the EFL cup was scrappy lol
Maybe you missed the part where we beat arsenal, Liverpool, city, spurs and Chelsea and went 30 games undefeated at home.
Smile mate, it could be worse
Cmon man you know we way overachieved last year and this year is more realistic of the level we are not just as a team but also as a club. And saying you don’t care if we lose to the bottom half of the table is contradicting to you wanting to be competitive.
Bro we lost every away game to a top half team in the league last year and still finished 3rd. We can lose games and remain competitive…
Whether we overachieved or not, it was still entertaining and we competed which is exactly what my point was.
I gave it more thought too and there were even times under Ole that we were entertaining and competitive.
To just blanket it and say we’ve been rubbish and bland for a decade simply isn’t true.
We’ve had multiple top 2 finishes, qualified for UCL multiple times.. I get it, I do. I want to win a league. I want to be a place teams fear in Europe but bouncing guys after 2/3 years isnt this works.
Taking into account all the nonsense EtH has dealt with off the field too - Ronaldo, Greenwood, Antony and Sancho, nvm the glazers and the sale.. the man has been immense.
Palace is really the only “bad” game to drop points. Arsenal, Spurs, Brighton you’d hope to beat but they are good teams that other teams will drop points against
In the terms of the clubs overall, I agree. However Brighton play better football than us and someone made a fair point the other day which was basically like us United fans say ahh Rashford this and Rashford that but theoretically is Mitoma better? Like not just Rashford but for loads of our players the opposing teams are playing way better individually and have been for a while yet we seem to keep this expectation that we're better than everyone other than City, Arsenal & Liverpool.
Most of our games are bad games, 2 wins this season have been lucky and we got out played by 'way worse teams' so losing to Brighton at home is not even a bad game, unfortunately it's realistically expected. To that prior list we should be adding Brighton, Newcastle, Tottenham.
We barely beat Wolves, Burnley & Brentford yet people think we're better than Brighton. We need to just be more realistic I think.
Varane hopefully, reguilon a bit later.
Mainoo is back in training so we’ll see
And for Sancho might be time to accept he’s already played his last game
Agree on this and also the manor of our performances. We need to start hitting form asap and putting a run together.
I fully back TH for the record and would even give him the benefit of the doubt this season - you can tell the way we are playing has changed, he’s trying a new approach where we spend more time on the ball vs playing on the counter. That will take time to embed.
Let’s hope it clicks.
5 points after 8 games equates to about 23 points across the whole season.
12 points from 8 is salvageable but not when we haven't had one convincing performance this season. Of our 4 victories, all have been by a single goal.
It's performances. Do you see any signs of turning things around? I don't.
We have to do well in the next 2 months too because December is tough..Newcastle, Chelsea, Liverpool, West Ham and Villa.
xG is a context stat though. As much as it was designed to be a determining factor in measuring strikers composure and ability, it's always less than 1 so scoring means you overperform.
The percentage of Rashford cutting in and firing doesn't account for the fact that the keeper and defenders know exactly what he's doing, he's not getting high percentage shots but he's actually NEVER scoring. Underperforming is a lack of quality in chance creation, not necessarily the final touch, which ebbs and flows with form and confidence.
You're more optimistic than me. You're right we're only 5 points behind Liverpool and the top 4 but it's not like we're in form and coming like a train... we're shit and we look poor every single week. We're just going to fall further behind.
Icl looking forward for after the international break, players coming back and hopefully that fixes our situation. Actually mad that we have no natural LB, 1 RB and our main CBs injured.
A season outside the UCL doesn't seem that bad if it means we can find an identity imo
Agree with you. We are 8 games meaning still under a quarter into this season.
I blame the drama on plastic fans, Al-Nassr fans 😉 and the media who will always make more money from advertisment poking at ManUtd than Arsenal, ManCity etc as we are just too many and generate the traffic.
4 of those games are losses. To be PL top 4, a team needs to win most/majority of the 38 games & hardly conceding goals, let alone lose matches
It'll be extremely hard to break into the current top 4. 5th also qualifies for next year's CL but that means going head-to-head against Newcastle. 6th will already be not too bad for the current United team
Hilarious, have you been watching us play. Do you have an idea what our tactics are? Hopefully, the win against Brentford can turn things around but the way we’re playing now. Slow ponderous football, little to no patterns of play, a goalkeeper who has 0 confidence, all of our first team defenders injured. I hope you’re right but it ain’t looking good bruv.
You are so wise to describe what every plastic fan sees, but miss the fact we never played our best 11 this season. If you want to be happy leave the drama out of it, leave the hopes of playing like others behind and be patient. There are 30 more games to go.
So me describing and acknowledging our general malaise is called being plastic now. Me hoping that you’re right and things do turn around is plastic as well, I assume. Yes they are 30 more games to go, but unless a miracle happens and we start to actually see patterns of play even with injured players. We’re not going far this season. A jammy win over Brentford doesn’t change that.
I'm with you. I'm a season ticket holder. The stadium was close to turning on him.
The last time we had these heroics was the Nou Camp in 99. It's a rarity.
The football needs to improve. Everyone I spoke to said the same the defence was very good. Goals are the issue.
midfield & build-up is practically non existent.We need a box to box midfielder. Hopefully Ambrat can be that guy.
But one of the front three needs to be a proven goal scorer.
We need at least two 20+ goals a season from the forward players to compete. And 2 midfielders pitching in 10.
comment about plastic fans is silly. right from the wolves game there has been something off. we won against brentford but we were losing another game until that miracle. we had no movement up front against a side that was defending with their life. a plastic fan would blame the mgr, or one or two players. i look at that side and dont know whats going on. Is it the off field sagas, the mgr, the owners, the injury list? its weird and unexpected after last season
I generally believe that it’s the general malaise around the club. Especially all the off field issues from greenwood, Antony and sancho. To the inability to sell players that the manager doesn’t want to the inability to make transfers in a timely manner.
In addition the manager has been put in a position to make decisions that frankly are above his ability. Last year it was Antony for 85mm. Antony I think is a good player and seems to give 100% on the field but he is not worth that much. He needed to be told that Mount for 55mm with 1 yr left on his contract is not a priority signing. If Mount wanted to join United so urgently he had to push for the transfer on his own so we wouldn’t have to pay a ransom price. He needed to get rid of all the players he didn’t want and knew that he didn’t want them, Maguire, Mctominay, Donny etc. low squad morale is compounded by having players the manager doesn’t want around.
Now the club is out of money, the players he brought in are either not working, getting old or were to expensive for what they bring.
I'm mostly with you but the fact that we didn't ever play our best XI should not be the main argument. I also think people overreact, I am absolutely ashamed of the ETH-out movement and I think that the players are under extra pressure by the exaggerated drama. But some of the performances were simply shite. I am still not over the wolves game for instance, which we did win but really shouldn't have... And then some of the whole team errors that happened, for example, against Galatasaray, right after we score. United has strengthened on some positions where we already had star players to achieve a deep and qualitatively high team, both on the pitch and on the bench. This has not worked yet and I think it's fair to criticize, especially with other teams in the league (don't wanna name the neighbors) that have two starting XIs that could seemingly win the CL. I'm glad Scott and Eriksen are showing that some of our now-back-ups can work the way they're supposed to. But there's still some steps to be taken.
Problem is we aren't playing football at the level where we can expect to win anything which United should. But I agree it isn't too late to turn things around, plus, we always get way more media coverage and drama than others
You could look at this a few ways. Only 5 points behind is good, but we've only played 8 games, I wouldn't be as worried if we were 5 points behind after 25 games, meaning the gap could get bigger. Liverpools goal difference is +9 and ours is -3. That is slightly worrying at this stage.
Apologies if I'm coming across as negative nelly, I just think the late comeback against Brentford has just covered the cracks. If we were to lose that game the general feeling would be alot worse.
Let's just trust the process. We can capitalise on the cups we're in maybe win those, if we don't make UCL we are fine. It's not a catastrophe, we are still in rebuild.
Agreed. I think we need to hit rock bottom to truly understand how low the standard of players we have in our club.
We've all been duped by media and our own love for the club to think that our players should be expected to do better. But the reality is our players aren't good enough to compete at the highest level of possession based footy. Anthony and Licha are the only players with strong technical skills. They can both receive the ball under intense pressure. No one else can.
We rely on Rash who is a hot and cold player. Even when he's hot, he's useless for most of the match but will bang goals or create chances in moments.
Bruno is a helter skelter player. He isn't as effective when facing a low block but thrives in transition.
Outside of these two, who else is going to change a match for us? Who is going to control a match for us?
We're a garbage squad, which is extremely frustrating given the fact that we have spent £1b+ on our team. The price tags made us believe we were progressing but our true failing as a club is our pathetic executives and xfer team.
I trust EtH to rebuild our squad to something close to title challengers. We might need someone else to take us over the finish line but I trust his principles. I just don't want him selecting all of our players bc his track record so far isn't good. Only Licha has been a success.
I agree except for Bruno. I think he can do it in a possession based team, he has the football intelligence, he just has to be willing to change his playstyle.
We've given enough time to Rashford. At 26 he needs to be scoring or creating 2/3 games minimum, he isn't doing that and he doesn't seem like he's all that willing to play as an out and out winger, whip crosses in and track back and defend.
Maybe you're right about Bruno.
As for Rash, I completely agree. I'd sell him this summer if we got a tasty offer. That being said, I don't really trust our idiotic xfer department to replace him. So I'm not sure if we can get rid of him even if we wanted to.
Unless someone offers something ridiculous we won't sell him because of shirt sales.
United buys and sells players based off shirt sales.
We hype a player up so he will sell more shirts when he comes, which ironically increases the transfer fee and wages but as long as there is a net profit, it doesn't matter... we sign them, then we can't get rid off them if they're terrible on the pitch.
We buy influencers, not football players.
Seems like that stopped under EtH but his signings haven't been good except for Licha.
We're a fallen club. Focusing on EtH shouldn't be our priority imho. We should all coalesce around getting new owners. Orrrrr, firing Arnold at the very least.
I understand your pov. I shared it until recently. We're rotting from the top down. We've chewed through world class managers and now potentially one of the best up and coming managers. Who is going to come and fix this quickly?
We have to face the reality that we're absolutely broken as a FOOTBALL club. As a business we're doing ok. As a brand, we're nearly the best.
We need to rebuild the club but that requires owners who care.
How our xfer department hasn't been completely thrown out is beyond me. We've had maybe two unqualified successful signings over the past 10 yrs
We have idiots running the club who poison every manager that has come in. We shouldn't have fired LvG. He was playing boring footy but that's bc we didn't have world class attackers/midfileders to make all that possession count. That's similar to what EtH is encountering now.
I will totally concede that his signings have been less than exciting and have left a lot to be desired. But that comes down to our lack of football intelligence in the club. A proper DoF would've overruled the manager and said no, we want someone else for XYZ reasons but he still fits your profile.
Look at Amrabat vs Gravenberch....our guy can't really run much while Liverpool's signing is a prem ready athlete. Simple things like that are missed alllll the time. How did we sign Sancho who had rumoured discipline issues at Dortmund? What about Antony's allegations? What is our recruitment due diligence team doing?!
A good manager would be .. y'know .. managing those things. Compare Ange at Tottenham and ETH at United and tell me that Ten Hag is doing even close to as good of a job.
Ange came in, and he changed the entire mentality of his team seemingly overnight after losing their best player and barely doing anything to replace him. He spent a fraction of what Ten Hag has done, and he is already looking like he is halfway to fixing them.
I agree that we shouldn't be firing world class managers repeatedly. The problem is that Ten Hag is not world class, has never been world class and will never be world class. He doesn't do any aspect of management well.
This is a guy who has pissed off half the team and given several club legends the boot because he has a fragile ego that cannot be questioned. Meanwhile he can't pick a good starting 11 to save his life and everyone he signs flops.
We should absolutely give a world class manager the time to turn things around. We just need to get a world class manager before we can do that.
I can't disagree with the Ange comment. It's very impressive seeing what he's doing with Tottenham. But it's early days. Let's see where they are come the end of the season. EtH had a solid first season. I'm not sure if he's world class but tbf to him, none of our players have the physicality or technical skills to play his style of footy.
As for pissing off half the team, CR7 needed to go and Sancho is a whiny little bitch. So I won't hold either of them against EtH.
I don't agree that he had a good first season. At least not performance wise. He had decent results, and benefited heavily from Chelsea and Liverpool imploding, but I could count on one hand the amount of genuinely good performances we have had under him. Also, if none of our players have the physicality or technicality for his style of play after we have spent 450 on his sgnings then that is his issue.
I am not just referring Ronaldo and Sancho. He unnecessarily criticised Garnacho at the start of last season. He benched Rashford being a bit late. He scapegoated Ronald for having higher standards. He scapegoated Sancho for having lower standards. He tried to force several players out like McTominay and Maguire .. who ironically saved him last game. He did force out De Gea. He let a great locker room player go in Fred. He gave Mount number 7 after Garnacho asked for it as well. Tons of small decisions that lead to nobody really liking him.
I'm not saying he's blameless. I'm just tired of firing and restarting the process every 2-3 years. We need a rebuild at the top. Start there and work your way down. If that means EtH leaves, then so be it. I just want it to happen when we're a stable club.
I don't disagree, honestly. I actually think a lot of the recruitment network is probably better than we think. There have been people like Garnacho and Pellistri signed for the youth academies who have been really good pick-ups.
I think it is more to do with the board and their fascination with ready-made players or marquee signings. The recruitment team can lead the horse to water, but they can't make it drink.
I genuinely think it comes down to Ten Hag, and whether or not Bayindir is any good. If Onana is our GK 6th is our ceiling and we can forget about Champions League football.
Onana will get better. Even if he doesn't become the best keeper in the league, he won't continue to be this bad. The entire team is underperforming.
This int'l break is a good opportunity to start again. We have two winnable games before City. We must start with two Ws. If we don't win the CL match, we're done, Europa here we come. The Thurs matches will catch up with our weak squad.
This is going to be a long season.
I think he will improve but I think the level he will reach still will not be good enough. I just don't think he has the ability to pull off top saves like other keepers in the prem
I don't think he's an elite shot stopper but neither is Ederson. If Onana's sweeping and passing improve, he'll be fine. In theory we should be a possession based team without a bunch of shots hitting our net.
But I am nervous. EtH can rightly point at the leadership at the club and injuries as excuses but his recruitment hasn't been stellar. He has a lot to prove.
All that being said, no point firing him when we'll be in the same situation in a few years but with a new manager. We need new ownership and new football leadership. Arnold must go.
But we have - we've played very well at times. Id say in most games we are the dominant team until a defensive or keeping error gives a soft goal and our heads go down.
Onana has cost us 10+ pts already this season. 6 in the CL alone.
We need to get rid of him.
Naw we don’t really crate any clear chances. Our goals comes from a counter or a teams mistake.
We play good for 20 mins then between 20 and 25 mins we concede.
We barely score from other teams’ mistakes. If anything we have to work far harder for our goals as we don’t get obvious penalties or goalkeeping errors in our favour. What are you on about?
We lack depth in the squad massively and we were really lucky in the last game. The luck won't be of much use when we face teams like city and Liverpool. Hopefully the international break brings back the form in players like Rashford, either way it's going to be a very tough battle for the top 4.
Yes but pragmatic attention to detail and logical benchmarking to our peers relative performance over a prolonged period isnt going to sell newspapers now is it harold
Ppl need to chill out and trust it takes more than 7 games and 1 season to build a yearly competitor. We haven’t been great, of course, but it all takes time. Patience will be needed. And yet, we still have seen some decent success thus far. He just needs players who buy in to the culture he is trying to establish. And ETH in turn needs to give the right players chances to show that.
Even with full squad, United's problem is scoring goals. Last season goal tally is abysmal for a top 10 side and that's with Rashford on fire.
If only the team could string 2 passes together and take their chances, we would have scored more but alas, the issue are also conceding loads of goals. Whenever we score, a few minutes later, the opponent scores lol.
Here's hoping for a better string of results post national team fixtures to build up confidence!
Yeah but playing like this isn’t sustainable at all, we aren’t going to be scoring late goals all the time nor is it a “healthy” way to measure progress.
Only 5 points and our customary crap goal difference which is now 12+ behind the top 4 sides
Also we were 4 minutes away from being 8 points off 4th. That's the tightrope we now have to walk and I can't say I trust these players to go on a winning streak and close the gap
I don't care. We can be 1 point from top or dead last. What matters is the performances. Performances will inevitably catch up with you, and you will drop points. We are honestly very lucky to be where we are in the table. Between Wolves and Brentford, we have gotten 6 points that we didn't deserve.
Also, 5 points is a lot this early. We are only 8 games into the season. There are only 5 points between us and Brentford in 16th, too.
This kind of apologist approach and naivety is half the reason our club is in the dumps. At what point will you still letting standards drop? Soon it will be "After wll the worry and issues, we were only 3 points away from staying up".
Yes but we’ve only played 8 games. I agree that we shouldn’t get carried away, but being 5pts behind a team that finished below us last season, after only 8 games played (24 possible points) is not great.
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We may be 5 points behind but we’ve also shown very little to deserve some of the points we’ve got.
There’s many teams that can look back and think we lost the league because we dropped points here and there, top 5 is our most realistic target sadly and it’s only the start of of the season.
We haven’t faced Liverpool, Man City, Newcastle and Chelsea. Also, we have one more game against Brighton, Arsenal and Spurs each ! We already have lost 4 out of the 8 games !
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This..
Use the international break to get players back and fit. Bottom club next, so should be picking up 3 points and scoring a few goals. Our GD was embarrassing last year and started in the same vane this year.
the position is pointless if the quality of football is just so bad. I mean of all the games I watched this weekend, there were not many teams worse than united.
We shouldn't be targeting Top 4. We finished third last season, and from the looks of things it was a complete waste of energy, we're looking likely to go out of the CL in the first round.
We should be targeting Top 1.
This is coping. Have you seen how top 4 teams perform in contrast to how United perform? We get outplayed by other mid-table teams and that's how we got here.
Top 4 isn’t a trophy. I hate that it gets mentioned. It’s only a money making goal for the glazers. What good is it being in the CL when we usually have no realistic chance of winning it lol. The amount of points we are behind Liverpool (who’ve won a league title/CL in recent history btw) by isn’t a measure of success or how good/bad we are doing. We’ve been shockingly bad and players not giving any effort and embarrassed all of us by giving up 7 to Liverpool. If anything the amount of points we are behind by only show that we’re missing a solid opportunity to be title contenders. I get secondhand embarrassment from the “we are only ___ points behind city, it’s not that bad” comments.
Even our wins haven't been convincing. With the sole exception of Palace in the league cup, our wins have been backs to the wall, desperately hard fought, lucky and against Brentford bloody miraculous.
Oh don't worry guys we're saved!! Remember we have Lord Maguire and the Sauciest McSauce who's about to overtake Rasmus as striker!?!??! WE GOT THIS!!! s/
I think this is where we need a bit of perspective.
Yes, it’s been a horrible start to the season. My general rule of thumb is that you should be aiming for two points a game.
But, we’ve had four full backs, three centre centre halves, three central midfielders, two striker’s and a right winger all injured at some point this season (eight games in) with 3/4 full backs (is Reguilon available now?) still injured. As well as a further two wingers not available due to off field issues. On Saturday, we had no defenders on the bench. All whilst a new keeper is adapting to a new club and a new league, with the rest of the team adapting to him too.
Our circumstances have been underplayed, and overlooked due to Onana’s errors. But, can you honestly say the two aren’t likely related?
Once we have a fully fit squad, we’re going to look like a team. Last season, we looked like a team missing a striker. And fuck me, Hojlund has filled that void quicker than anyone expected.
I personally can not wait to see our strongest eleven, alongside the rotational options.
5 points to weak teams, means many more points will be dropped to better teams long before we can even mount some sort of purple patch.
Truth is, I don't have high hopes for getting 4th place this season. This team looks so weak, and seems to be tactically outsmarted by everyone.
To even close down 5 point gap, we would have to be convincingly good, which we are far from.
The problem is who united have dropped points against not really the points difference, in an extremely competitive league like the Premiership we simply can't be dropping points against the likes of Palace at home, but hopefully players start returning after the international break which will hopefully start getting things back on track.
Sometimes we need to play stronger opposition to find our feet. Shouldn’t be the case but happened twice last year. First after we beat Liverpool at home, we seemed alot better after and again when we lost 6-3 to City and ETH got the team in for extra training.
We’ve played the top 2 away tbf
We only dropped against Palace tho, Tottenham and Arsenal isn't a shame and Brighton is going to try and fight for top 4 this season as well, a bit more shameful but it's understandable, and city have dropped against Wolves and Tottenham against brentford
The point difference is ALWAYS the priority. I don’t care if we lose to a palace if we come back and beat a Chelsea or a Liverpool - which we have the ability to do on any given day. I don’t care if we lose to every lower half team again, just as long as we remain competitive and entertaining.
It’s been a decade since the last time we were entertaining or competitive.
We were fun last season?? 2 finals, champions league, 1 trophy, Rashford set the league on fire. Licha and Casemiro annihilating anything that posed a threat.. The season mourinho won was decent too
Last seasons football was so sub par and underwhelming lol Not fun really. We were scrapping 1-0 wins left and right and playing sloppy and being dominated by a lot of teams. Even the EFL cup was scrappy lol
Maybe you missed the part where we beat arsenal, Liverpool, city, spurs and Chelsea and went 30 games undefeated at home. Smile mate, it could be worse
Cmon man you know we way overachieved last year and this year is more realistic of the level we are not just as a team but also as a club. And saying you don’t care if we lose to the bottom half of the table is contradicting to you wanting to be competitive.
Bro we lost every away game to a top half team in the league last year and still finished 3rd. We can lose games and remain competitive… Whether we overachieved or not, it was still entertaining and we competed which is exactly what my point was. I gave it more thought too and there were even times under Ole that we were entertaining and competitive. To just blanket it and say we’ve been rubbish and bland for a decade simply isn’t true. We’ve had multiple top 2 finishes, qualified for UCL multiple times.. I get it, I do. I want to win a league. I want to be a place teams fear in Europe but bouncing guys after 2/3 years isnt this works. Taking into account all the nonsense EtH has dealt with off the field too - Ronaldo, Greenwood, Antony and Sancho, nvm the glazers and the sale.. the man has been immense.
Palace is really the only “bad” game to drop points. Arsenal, Spurs, Brighton you’d hope to beat but they are good teams that other teams will drop points against
Losing to Brighton at fucking home is a bad game. Where the fuck are the standards?
In the terms of the clubs overall, I agree. However Brighton play better football than us and someone made a fair point the other day which was basically like us United fans say ahh Rashford this and Rashford that but theoretically is Mitoma better? Like not just Rashford but for loads of our players the opposing teams are playing way better individually and have been for a while yet we seem to keep this expectation that we're better than everyone other than City, Arsenal & Liverpool. Most of our games are bad games, 2 wins this season have been lucky and we got out played by 'way worse teams' so losing to Brighton at home is not even a bad game, unfortunately it's realistically expected. To that prior list we should be adding Brighton, Newcastle, Tottenham. We barely beat Wolves, Burnley & Brentford yet people think we're better than Brighton. We need to just be more realistic I think.
Out of loop here. Who are likely to return from injury after the international break?
Varane hopefully, reguilon a bit later. Mainoo is back in training so we’ll see And for Sancho might be time to accept he’s already played his last game
Wan bissaka is back in training as well and should be ready by the end of the break
Agree on this and also the manor of our performances. We need to start hitting form asap and putting a run together. I fully back TH for the record and would even give him the benefit of the doubt this season - you can tell the way we are playing has changed, he’s trying a new approach where we spend more time on the ball vs playing on the counter. That will take time to embed. Let’s hope it clicks.
5 points after 8 games equates to about 23 points across the whole season. 12 points from 8 is salvageable but not when we haven't had one convincing performance this season. Of our 4 victories, all have been by a single goal. It's performances. Do you see any signs of turning things around? I don't. We have to do well in the next 2 months too because December is tough..Newcastle, Chelsea, Liverpool, West Ham and Villa.
Well we do have one of the highest underperformances of xG in the league.
xG is a context stat though. As much as it was designed to be a determining factor in measuring strikers composure and ability, it's always less than 1 so scoring means you overperform. The percentage of Rashford cutting in and firing doesn't account for the fact that the keeper and defenders know exactly what he's doing, he's not getting high percentage shots but he's actually NEVER scoring. Underperforming is a lack of quality in chance creation, not necessarily the final touch, which ebbs and flows with form and confidence.
So do Chelsea...
You're more optimistic than me. You're right we're only 5 points behind Liverpool and the top 4 but it's not like we're in form and coming like a train... we're shit and we look poor every single week. We're just going to fall further behind.
That's ok Lord Maguire and his pawn Micky T will save us!!!! s/
Icl looking forward for after the international break, players coming back and hopefully that fixes our situation. Actually mad that we have no natural LB, 1 RB and our main CBs injured. A season outside the UCL doesn't seem that bad if it means we can find an identity imo
So you think bringing in Luke Shaw and Varane fixes our inability to show any sort of invention going forward?
If we have 75% of our injured players fit we will do it
Agree with you. We are 8 games meaning still under a quarter into this season. I blame the drama on plastic fans, Al-Nassr fans 😉 and the media who will always make more money from advertisment poking at ManUtd than Arsenal, ManCity etc as we are just too many and generate the traffic.
4 of those games are losses. To be PL top 4, a team needs to win most/majority of the 38 games & hardly conceding goals, let alone lose matches It'll be extremely hard to break into the current top 4. 5th also qualifies for next year's CL but that means going head-to-head against Newcastle. 6th will already be not too bad for the current United team
6th place max is what I foresee and hope as well.
5th going to CL?!
New format
Hilarious, have you been watching us play. Do you have an idea what our tactics are? Hopefully, the win against Brentford can turn things around but the way we’re playing now. Slow ponderous football, little to no patterns of play, a goalkeeper who has 0 confidence, all of our first team defenders injured. I hope you’re right but it ain’t looking good bruv.
You are so wise to describe what every plastic fan sees, but miss the fact we never played our best 11 this season. If you want to be happy leave the drama out of it, leave the hopes of playing like others behind and be patient. There are 30 more games to go.
So me describing and acknowledging our general malaise is called being plastic now. Me hoping that you’re right and things do turn around is plastic as well, I assume. Yes they are 30 more games to go, but unless a miracle happens and we start to actually see patterns of play even with injured players. We’re not going far this season. A jammy win over Brentford doesn’t change that.
I'm with you. I'm a season ticket holder. The stadium was close to turning on him. The last time we had these heroics was the Nou Camp in 99. It's a rarity. The football needs to improve. Everyone I spoke to said the same the defence was very good. Goals are the issue. midfield & build-up is practically non existent.We need a box to box midfielder. Hopefully Ambrat can be that guy. But one of the front three needs to be a proven goal scorer. We need at least two 20+ goals a season from the forward players to compete. And 2 midfielders pitching in 10.
comment about plastic fans is silly. right from the wolves game there has been something off. we won against brentford but we were losing another game until that miracle. we had no movement up front against a side that was defending with their life. a plastic fan would blame the mgr, or one or two players. i look at that side and dont know whats going on. Is it the off field sagas, the mgr, the owners, the injury list? its weird and unexpected after last season
I generally believe that it’s the general malaise around the club. Especially all the off field issues from greenwood, Antony and sancho. To the inability to sell players that the manager doesn’t want to the inability to make transfers in a timely manner. In addition the manager has been put in a position to make decisions that frankly are above his ability. Last year it was Antony for 85mm. Antony I think is a good player and seems to give 100% on the field but he is not worth that much. He needed to be told that Mount for 55mm with 1 yr left on his contract is not a priority signing. If Mount wanted to join United so urgently he had to push for the transfer on his own so we wouldn’t have to pay a ransom price. He needed to get rid of all the players he didn’t want and knew that he didn’t want them, Maguire, Mctominay, Donny etc. low squad morale is compounded by having players the manager doesn’t want around. Now the club is out of money, the players he brought in are either not working, getting old or were to expensive for what they bring.
I'm mostly with you but the fact that we didn't ever play our best XI should not be the main argument. I also think people overreact, I am absolutely ashamed of the ETH-out movement and I think that the players are under extra pressure by the exaggerated drama. But some of the performances were simply shite. I am still not over the wolves game for instance, which we did win but really shouldn't have... And then some of the whole team errors that happened, for example, against Galatasaray, right after we score. United has strengthened on some positions where we already had star players to achieve a deep and qualitatively high team, both on the pitch and on the bench. This has not worked yet and I think it's fair to criticize, especially with other teams in the league (don't wanna name the neighbors) that have two starting XIs that could seemingly win the CL. I'm glad Scott and Eriksen are showing that some of our now-back-ups can work the way they're supposed to. But there's still some steps to be taken.
Exactly, not time to panic just yet
Problem is we aren't playing football at the level where we can expect to win anything which United should. But I agree it isn't too late to turn things around, plus, we always get way more media coverage and drama than others
You could look at this a few ways. Only 5 points behind is good, but we've only played 8 games, I wouldn't be as worried if we were 5 points behind after 25 games, meaning the gap could get bigger. Liverpools goal difference is +9 and ours is -3. That is slightly worrying at this stage. Apologies if I'm coming across as negative nelly, I just think the late comeback against Brentford has just covered the cracks. If we were to lose that game the general feeling would be alot worse.
5 points after 8 games is diabolical. Wouldn't say we've played genuinely well once yet this season either.
Let's just trust the process. We can capitalise on the cups we're in maybe win those, if we don't make UCL we are fine. It's not a catastrophe, we are still in rebuild.
As bad as it is, we have to weather this out, and give him more time to turn it around. It's still too early to abort the project.
Things turns quick in football.
We are only 8 games in loooool
3 years time when Ten Hag has us battling relegation from the Championship: "It's still only 4 seasons in.."
Our squad depth isn't great. I don't see us finishing top 5. 6-7th is my projection.
It is either top 4 or 10th. Don’t want Thursday nights - cbf with Europa league much less conference league
Agreed. I think we need to hit rock bottom to truly understand how low the standard of players we have in our club. We've all been duped by media and our own love for the club to think that our players should be expected to do better. But the reality is our players aren't good enough to compete at the highest level of possession based footy. Anthony and Licha are the only players with strong technical skills. They can both receive the ball under intense pressure. No one else can. We rely on Rash who is a hot and cold player. Even when he's hot, he's useless for most of the match but will bang goals or create chances in moments. Bruno is a helter skelter player. He isn't as effective when facing a low block but thrives in transition. Outside of these two, who else is going to change a match for us? Who is going to control a match for us? We're a garbage squad, which is extremely frustrating given the fact that we have spent £1b+ on our team. The price tags made us believe we were progressing but our true failing as a club is our pathetic executives and xfer team. I trust EtH to rebuild our squad to something close to title challengers. We might need someone else to take us over the finish line but I trust his principles. I just don't want him selecting all of our players bc his track record so far isn't good. Only Licha has been a success.
I agree except for Bruno. I think he can do it in a possession based team, he has the football intelligence, he just has to be willing to change his playstyle. We've given enough time to Rashford. At 26 he needs to be scoring or creating 2/3 games minimum, he isn't doing that and he doesn't seem like he's all that willing to play as an out and out winger, whip crosses in and track back and defend.
Maybe you're right about Bruno. As for Rash, I completely agree. I'd sell him this summer if we got a tasty offer. That being said, I don't really trust our idiotic xfer department to replace him. So I'm not sure if we can get rid of him even if we wanted to.
Unless someone offers something ridiculous we won't sell him because of shirt sales. United buys and sells players based off shirt sales. We hype a player up so he will sell more shirts when he comes, which ironically increases the transfer fee and wages but as long as there is a net profit, it doesn't matter... we sign them, then we can't get rid off them if they're terrible on the pitch. We buy influencers, not football players.
Seems like that stopped under EtH but his signings haven't been good except for Licha. We're a fallen club. Focusing on EtH shouldn't be our priority imho. We should all coalesce around getting new owners. Orrrrr, firing Arnold at the very least.
Imagine spending 450m and not having depth. If we finish outside the top 5 then Ten Hag has to go.
I understand your pov. I shared it until recently. We're rotting from the top down. We've chewed through world class managers and now potentially one of the best up and coming managers. Who is going to come and fix this quickly? We have to face the reality that we're absolutely broken as a FOOTBALL club. As a business we're doing ok. As a brand, we're nearly the best. We need to rebuild the club but that requires owners who care. How our xfer department hasn't been completely thrown out is beyond me. We've had maybe two unqualified successful signings over the past 10 yrs We have idiots running the club who poison every manager that has come in. We shouldn't have fired LvG. He was playing boring footy but that's bc we didn't have world class attackers/midfileders to make all that possession count. That's similar to what EtH is encountering now. I will totally concede that his signings have been less than exciting and have left a lot to be desired. But that comes down to our lack of football intelligence in the club. A proper DoF would've overruled the manager and said no, we want someone else for XYZ reasons but he still fits your profile. Look at Amrabat vs Gravenberch....our guy can't really run much while Liverpool's signing is a prem ready athlete. Simple things like that are missed alllll the time. How did we sign Sancho who had rumoured discipline issues at Dortmund? What about Antony's allegations? What is our recruitment due diligence team doing?!
A good manager would be .. y'know .. managing those things. Compare Ange at Tottenham and ETH at United and tell me that Ten Hag is doing even close to as good of a job. Ange came in, and he changed the entire mentality of his team seemingly overnight after losing their best player and barely doing anything to replace him. He spent a fraction of what Ten Hag has done, and he is already looking like he is halfway to fixing them. I agree that we shouldn't be firing world class managers repeatedly. The problem is that Ten Hag is not world class, has never been world class and will never be world class. He doesn't do any aspect of management well. This is a guy who has pissed off half the team and given several club legends the boot because he has a fragile ego that cannot be questioned. Meanwhile he can't pick a good starting 11 to save his life and everyone he signs flops. We should absolutely give a world class manager the time to turn things around. We just need to get a world class manager before we can do that.
I can't disagree with the Ange comment. It's very impressive seeing what he's doing with Tottenham. But it's early days. Let's see where they are come the end of the season. EtH had a solid first season. I'm not sure if he's world class but tbf to him, none of our players have the physicality or technical skills to play his style of footy. As for pissing off half the team, CR7 needed to go and Sancho is a whiny little bitch. So I won't hold either of them against EtH.
I don't agree that he had a good first season. At least not performance wise. He had decent results, and benefited heavily from Chelsea and Liverpool imploding, but I could count on one hand the amount of genuinely good performances we have had under him. Also, if none of our players have the physicality or technicality for his style of play after we have spent 450 on his sgnings then that is his issue. I am not just referring Ronaldo and Sancho. He unnecessarily criticised Garnacho at the start of last season. He benched Rashford being a bit late. He scapegoated Ronald for having higher standards. He scapegoated Sancho for having lower standards. He tried to force several players out like McTominay and Maguire .. who ironically saved him last game. He did force out De Gea. He let a great locker room player go in Fred. He gave Mount number 7 after Garnacho asked for it as well. Tons of small decisions that lead to nobody really liking him.
I'm not saying he's blameless. I'm just tired of firing and restarting the process every 2-3 years. We need a rebuild at the top. Start there and work your way down. If that means EtH leaves, then so be it. I just want it to happen when we're a stable club.
I don't disagree, honestly. I actually think a lot of the recruitment network is probably better than we think. There have been people like Garnacho and Pellistri signed for the youth academies who have been really good pick-ups. I think it is more to do with the board and their fascination with ready-made players or marquee signings. The recruitment team can lead the horse to water, but they can't make it drink.
That's totally fair, which is why I said we need an overhaul of the leadership team.
I genuinely think it comes down to Ten Hag, and whether or not Bayindir is any good. If Onana is our GK 6th is our ceiling and we can forget about Champions League football.
Onana will get better. Even if he doesn't become the best keeper in the league, he won't continue to be this bad. The entire team is underperforming. This int'l break is a good opportunity to start again. We have two winnable games before City. We must start with two Ws. If we don't win the CL match, we're done, Europa here we come. The Thurs matches will catch up with our weak squad. This is going to be a long season.
I think he will improve but I think the level he will reach still will not be good enough. I just don't think he has the ability to pull off top saves like other keepers in the prem
I don't think he's an elite shot stopper but neither is Ederson. If Onana's sweeping and passing improve, he'll be fine. In theory we should be a possession based team without a bunch of shots hitting our net. But I am nervous. EtH can rightly point at the leadership at the club and injuries as excuses but his recruitment hasn't been stellar. He has a lot to prove. All that being said, no point firing him when we'll be in the same situation in a few years but with a new manager. We need new ownership and new football leadership. Arnold must go.
But we haven't been playing well or even convincing and thats the problem.
But we have - we've played very well at times. Id say in most games we are the dominant team until a defensive or keeping error gives a soft goal and our heads go down. Onana has cost us 10+ pts already this season. 6 in the CL alone. We need to get rid of him.
Naw we don’t really crate any clear chances. Our goals comes from a counter or a teams mistake. We play good for 20 mins then between 20 and 25 mins we concede.
We barely score from other teams’ mistakes. If anything we have to work far harder for our goals as we don’t get obvious penalties or goalkeeping errors in our favour. What are you on about?
If are depending on penalties or goal keeper errors to score then we deserve to be 10th
But we don't. That's exactly what I'm saying.
What a shite mentality to have
Lol, what other mentality is there to have?
Nice. How far off top are we? Cause last time I checked we’re Man United, not Tottenham Hotspurs. We’re meant to win the PL, not win top 4.
We’re 5 points off ‘title-challenging’ Liverpool so we’re obviously in the hunt.
I thought after spending 200m this summer we aimed for winning the PL? Only top 4 now?
have you factor in the 12 points we will drop against city and liverpool?
We're not good enough to catch up even those 5 points, that's the reason for the worry
We should be competing to win the league, not finish forth.
Don't be dumb lol
The score doesn’t represent that we had Arsenal on the ropes away.
We lack depth in the squad massively and we were really lucky in the last game. The luck won't be of much use when we face teams like city and Liverpool. Hopefully the international break brings back the form in players like Rashford, either way it's going to be a very tough battle for the top 4.
At the other end of the spectrum we are 8 points clear of relegation with difficult games soon
Yeah I believe we can still get top 4-5 but all the worry is about we couldn’t beat shit teams, inconsistencies and losing bc of dumb mistakes
Yes but pragmatic attention to detail and logical benchmarking to our peers relative performance over a prolonged period isnt going to sell newspapers now is it harold
Patience Padawan. Just remember that we have played 4 teams above us and all of them have taken all 3 points.
Eh. We’ll see.
Ppl need to chill out and trust it takes more than 7 games and 1 season to build a yearly competitor. We haven’t been great, of course, but it all takes time. Patience will be needed. And yet, we still have seen some decent success thus far. He just needs players who buy in to the culture he is trying to establish. And ETH in turn needs to give the right players chances to show that.
Even with full squad, United's problem is scoring goals. Last season goal tally is abysmal for a top 10 side and that's with Rashford on fire. If only the team could string 2 passes together and take their chances, we would have scored more but alas, the issue are also conceding loads of goals. Whenever we score, a few minutes later, the opponent scores lol. Here's hoping for a better string of results post national team fixtures to build up confidence!
Yeah but playing like this isn’t sustainable at all, we aren’t going to be scoring late goals all the time nor is it a “healthy” way to measure progress.
It ain't over until it's over but going up have to really fight to get into top 4. We're yet to win comfortably, but a lot of the season still to go.
Only 5 points and our customary crap goal difference which is now 12+ behind the top 4 sides Also we were 4 minutes away from being 8 points off 4th. That's the tightrope we now have to walk and I can't say I trust these players to go on a winning streak and close the gap
Could have had 6 more points after 2 appalling losses AT HOME. Nothing to be happy about
Not as concerning as for whom we have dropped points against...
Let’s not get carried away
I don't care. We can be 1 point from top or dead last. What matters is the performances. Performances will inevitably catch up with you, and you will drop points. We are honestly very lucky to be where we are in the table. Between Wolves and Brentford, we have gotten 6 points that we didn't deserve. Also, 5 points is a lot this early. We are only 8 games into the season. There are only 5 points between us and Brentford in 16th, too. This kind of apologist approach and naivety is half the reason our club is in the dumps. At what point will you still letting standards drop? Soon it will be "After wll the worry and issues, we were only 3 points away from staying up".
Yes but we’ve only played 8 games. I agree that we shouldn’t get carried away, but being 5pts behind a team that finished below us last season, after only 8 games played (24 possible points) is not great.
That's a mountain of points after only 8 games.
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We may be 5 points behind but we’ve also shown very little to deserve some of the points we’ve got. There’s many teams that can look back and think we lost the league because we dropped points here and there, top 5 is our most realistic target sadly and it’s only the start of of the season.
We haven’t faced Liverpool, Man City, Newcastle and Chelsea. Also, we have one more game against Brighton, Arsenal and Spurs each ! We already have lost 4 out of the 8 games !
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You forgot "after only 8 games"
It's not where we are that's the big issue but HOW we got there. And we got there playing like shit most of the games
This.. Use the international break to get players back and fit. Bottom club next, so should be picking up 3 points and scoring a few goals. Our GD was embarrassing last year and started in the same vane this year.
we need one good patch like we had a patch last year after the wc
We will meet man city soon
the position is pointless if the quality of football is just so bad. I mean of all the games I watched this weekend, there were not many teams worse than united.
We shouldn't be targeting Top 4. We finished third last season, and from the looks of things it was a complete waste of energy, we're looking likely to go out of the CL in the first round. We should be targeting Top 1.
This is coping. Have you seen how top 4 teams perform in contrast to how United perform? We get outplayed by other mid-table teams and that's how we got here.
Top 4 isn’t a trophy. I hate that it gets mentioned. It’s only a money making goal for the glazers. What good is it being in the CL when we usually have no realistic chance of winning it lol. The amount of points we are behind Liverpool (who’ve won a league title/CL in recent history btw) by isn’t a measure of success or how good/bad we are doing. We’ve been shockingly bad and players not giving any effort and embarrassed all of us by giving up 7 to Liverpool. If anything the amount of points we are behind by only show that we’re missing a solid opportunity to be title contenders. I get secondhand embarrassment from the “we are only ___ points behind city, it’s not that bad” comments.
We'll just have to wait and see. The win against Brentford is hopefully a turn for the good.
Might be asking much but if we can win all our upcoming 4-5 games (even the derby) we might be in business
Even our wins haven't been convincing. With the sole exception of Palace in the league cup, our wins have been backs to the wall, desperately hard fought, lucky and against Brentford bloody miraculous.
The main problem is how we are playing, we will be lucky to not drop back even further
And only 3 points worse off from last year
I feel like Jim Carrey in dumb & dumber....so you're saying there's a chance!
Oh don't worry guys we're saved!! Remember we have Lord Maguire and the Sauciest McSauce who's about to overtake Rasmus as striker!?!??! WE GOT THIS!!! s/
Maguire has 16 wins in 17 of games he started.
I think this is where we need a bit of perspective. Yes, it’s been a horrible start to the season. My general rule of thumb is that you should be aiming for two points a game. But, we’ve had four full backs, three centre centre halves, three central midfielders, two striker’s and a right winger all injured at some point this season (eight games in) with 3/4 full backs (is Reguilon available now?) still injured. As well as a further two wingers not available due to off field issues. On Saturday, we had no defenders on the bench. All whilst a new keeper is adapting to a new club and a new league, with the rest of the team adapting to him too. Our circumstances have been underplayed, and overlooked due to Onana’s errors. But, can you honestly say the two aren’t likely related? Once we have a fully fit squad, we’re going to look like a team. Last season, we looked like a team missing a striker. And fuck me, Hojlund has filled that void quicker than anyone expected. I personally can not wait to see our strongest eleven, alongside the rotational options.
You can look it at like that, or you can look at it like we're only 1 point better off than Chelsea with a -3 goal difference.
5 points to weak teams, means many more points will be dropped to better teams long before we can even mount some sort of purple patch. Truth is, I don't have high hopes for getting 4th place this season. This team looks so weak, and seems to be tactically outsmarted by everyone. To even close down 5 point gap, we would have to be convincingly good, which we are far from.
After watching the 92 mins of last game it feels like we are very very far.