Some initial lazy punditry here. Yes, there is a certain amount of you-never-know-in-a-derby, but at the same time, I do remember when we were crap and United were top of the pile, the one game, even more than the Everton one, we would get up for was this one. Languishing in mid-table (or lower) mediocrity, we often punched above our weight at home to United. I see so many similarities between us and them from '95-'10 at the moment. I have a feeling that we might not need to be on top of our game to win this. I remember being seriously pissed off and annoyed that as poorly as United had played against us, that they were there for the taking, they had somehow found a way to deny us with a late equalizer or winner. This is a piss-poor United side and Ole is far from a top class manager. I still don't get the sanctioning of the sale of Lukaku when you're short of forwards and I've yet to see him make in-game tactical adjustments, such as Klopp going to a diamond against Leicester, that have had any influence on the game. I'm struggling, even while being generous, to see any United player making our side. Maybe Maguire makes our bench? De Gea is better than Adrian, so that's one, but he doesn't get there ahead of Alisson. United are at 12th and if you look at the the teams directly above and below, that's the level of opponent. Wolves and Sheffield United. We've done SU away, playing poorly and for all Wolves' heroics at the Eitihad recently, I'm still not sure either of those two would scare us more than Leicester. So United shouldn't. On paper. Which is where games are not played. I do expect Operation Bus Park to be in full flight at OT, but absent injuries, we should have too much.
^^^^^ That's the hope. But form seems to go out the window (same with Everton). Last season is a great example. Oh - De Get always seems to have a blinder against us as well. In any case - we need to score early and often. That's about it. Their only tactic to stop is long balls to either James or Rashford. That's it. Of course we can expect all their players to be magically fit again as well - which doesn't make them great, but certainly puts out a better side than what they did at Newcastle.
against Newcy the other day, the Manure player who had the most touches in the Newcastle box ... was ..... ?? Maguire.
their crowd will be very up for this - a lot of pride at stake. but score early and they'll turn, fast. in last season's game -- they lost 3 men to injuries very early, yet despite all our dominance we only came away with a point. we benched AA to bolster the back 4 but they posed no threat, and Millie was poor coming forward. we've got to start best 11 this time.
We need to win this by a single highly controversial or flukey goal. Just enough to ensure plausible deniability for Ole and make sure he stays at the wheel.
Nahh - crush 'em! Ole is gonna get it sooner or later, so we might as well relish in our current superiority. No "second guessing" - which is what I think we did last year against Mourinho's side, and ended up way to conservative... They will most likely try to slow the game down, get under our skin, and hope they can hold out for the draw... Bring the Heavy Metal Football!
er - as I (and others) have said many times before .. we were a better team than them in both 95-96 and in 96-97 96-97 we had a 9 point lead at the holidays on all comers, but injuries destabilized the 2nd half of the season. If Berger and Fowler, Collymore and Mcmanaman Barnes and Redknapp had started 90 % of the games between Jan1 and May whenever we wouldhave won that damn championship. United won it with the lowest points total ever (I believe)............. 95-96 we were a fantastic side that just failed at the final hurdle - as did the other fantastic side that year (Newcastle) - both were better than United's first post Kanchelskis, Hughes, Ince young guns side. Eric Cantona was superhuman, but we had the better team. In the years 99 - 2005 I'd tend to agree with you, we punched above weight often, but we were (even under Houllier) cohesive units always. Hard to state that about United these days. But we will, as you say, I think, need to perform well to not make this quite nervy. On the other hand we could hit the ground running and murder them ....
No, we weren’t. The league position at the end of the season doesn’t lie. They won it both times. We weren’t even second best, as Newcastle finished runners up on both occasions. In ‘96-‘97, we actually contrived to finish 4th behind United, N’castle and Arsenal.
Cruel that this is after the international break, a chance for a LFC player to twist an ankle and for United to splash some cold water on their faces and get it together. If this occurred this past weekend, would have been an easy victory the way United are playing. Oh well. Just win.
I know, I said injuries messed up the 2nd half of that season. That 2nd year is harder to justify but barring injuries I don't think Man Utd would have dragged us back. The league table was certainly lying at the half-way point, end of December that year. What, btw, is this mysterious measurement which supposedly states that the team that comes out on top is the best team? What is so magical about 38 games as a sequence, what does it have that 30 or 50 or 20 doesn't have? The table doesn't lie about "who won" not who is/was possibly a better team. It's simply nonsense to state that the league table has anything rigorously exact to say say about that. We were also, in the opinion of many pundits, the best team in the year of Gerrard's slip. Of those two seasons, the first one we messed up the last few games of, through lack of will/concentration, whatever - but both Newcastle and Liverpool were memorably better than United that year. Just as Holland '74 were memorably better than Germany and Brazil '82 the same over Italy
If only there was some objective way to decide the best team in a competition, rather than having pundits, observers and fans argue very coherently without mistake for days, weeks, even years sometimes. If only. But, I know, I know, this is crazy talk. Best to keep the present system, where everyone argues endlessly until several winners are decided and everyone gets a medal.
we are in the right place then. Honestly though, I do remember thinking that United were very flat in 96-97. Everyone else just sort of fell away. That was the year that Ryan Giggs seemed to suffer a real lapse in form too, but it was made up for by Beckham's insane pin-point crossing to Cole and Yorke