PBP: EPL - West Ham United FC vs Manchester United FC - Sep 22, 2019 [R]

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This!! All of it! Every single word of it.

 

Wish I could say the awfulness of this performance was unexpected, but it really wasn't at all. When you look at the quality of the players on the field, it's just a very weak side we put out there. Frankly nothing about that front-6 would make you think we have any kind of edge against West Ham away from home. Any expectation that we "should" be taking the points is based more on history than on what was on the field yesterday.

And that's with two (albeit very important) players injured coming into the match; not a crisis by any means. The squad just isn't good and that is almost entirely on 6 years of mismanagement from Woody. Really hard to find even a glimmer of hope in this mess honestly.

 

Even recent history shows we struggle here. I dont think we have won here, in the league, for a few years.

 

Very true, and I think goes to my point. All the pundits up in arms acting like it's some shock to see us struggle this way against West Ham, when really how could you be surprised? This is the level we're at.

 

<sounds of nails having heads hit>

 

Without Pogba, West Hams front 6 are definitely better than ours. I don’t think that’s even debatable.

 

It used to be the case that when we were scuffling in a match against a midtable side, you thought to yourself "Even if we're shit for 85 minutes, we have guys on the field who only need a moment to win you the game". We didn't always play well but we always had real quality and match-winners in the side. On Sunday I found myself thinking the exact opposite - that it was West Ham who had the real danger men while we had nowhere to turn for a creative spark or moment of genius.

 

It’s sad that we’re currently relying on a kid that’s barely played at the PL level to be our creative force. Without Pogba our offense is reliant upon James beating someone off the dribble or Rashford scoring some speculative long range shot.

 

Yup, when you spell it out, we started McT (<20 league starts coming into this season), Matic (completely washed), AP (done nothing for us), Mata (completely washed), James (championship last year), and Rash (best season 10G, 6A in the league as a rotation option). At absolute best most of those guys should be rotation options - maybe Rash is the standard to be a regular starter. The rest are either over the hill or haven't done enough yet to show they belong at this level. Outside of Rash if a newly promoted side started that front group it wouldn't look out of place in the least.