News: The 2017/18 Season Preview, Discussion & Review Thread [R]

How United can cope with Pogba's absence, according to GNev and Carragher.

www.skysports.com/football/news/29326/11155943/gary-neville-and-jamie-carragher-on-paul-pogba-absence-for-sundays-manchester-derby

 

Pretty easy draw from United in the FA Cup, as they'll host Derby.

 

Michael Oliver is the ref for Man City game. Things are not looking great.

 

United are peaking at the right time - Herrera

www.skysports.com/football/news/11667/11156138/manchester-united-peaking-at-perfect-time-ahead-of-derby-against-manchester-city-says-ander-herrera

 

40 games unbeaten at the Theatre of Dreams... 🏟️👊 pic.twitter.com/tOsQKgP4Ef

— Manchester United (@ManUtd) December 5, 2017

 

👏 https://t.co/NGfcOyRoai

— Manchester United (@ManUtd) December 6, 2017

 

Oddly enough, our last home loss was last season vs City. Hope we can pay them that bill back this weekend...

 

It's a three club race for the prem trophy now. (You can forget about Liverpool and Arsenal. And why is there so little talk of Tottenham's woebegone season?) However far back we are right right now, December 6, there's only one club ahead of us, which is a very different situation than where we were at this time last season -- fourth (or maybe worse) and completely adrift.

City are still the heavy favorite to lift the trophy, but United being "only" 8 points back with 23 games left to play, I have no doubt JamesA would agree with me that we're still very much in the hunt. But we cannot allow City to defeat us on Sunday. A City win puts us 11 points back with 22 games left to play and only an epic and completely unforeseeable collapse by City would allow us back in the equation.

 

Manchester United's FA Cup match against Derby will NOT be televised.

The first time in 58 games and 12 consecutive years that a United FA Cup match won't be on the tele. ⚽🖥 pic.twitter.com/T1jkeE3KS3

— Football Tweet ⚽ (@Football__Tweet) December 7, 2017

 

Confirmed: Our home FA Cup third-round tie against Derby County will be played on Friday 5 January 2018 at 20:00 GMT. #MUFC pic.twitter.com/OAEbPMXsGM

— Manchester United (@ManUtd) December 9, 2017

 

#MUFC will face Sevilla in the @ChampionsLeague round of 16. The Reds will travel to Spain for the first leg on 13/14 or 20/21 February, with the second leg taking place on 6/7 or 13/14 March. #UCL pic.twitter.com/AZmmvGSVEz

— Manchester United (@ManUtd) December 11, 2017

 

Confirmation of our #UCL round of 16 fixtures... 🗓️

Sevilla v #MUFC: Wednesday 21 February, 2018#MUFC v Sevilla: Tuesday 13 March, 2018 pic.twitter.com/VWUDo3WO2m

— Manchester United (@ManUtd) December 11, 2017

 

The first leg is the week ahead of United's game vs Chelsea. Will be interesting to see how it will affect team selections for those CL ties.

 

Probably not much, if at all.

 

The title race is over, no one is catching City now - Shearer

www.bbc.com/sport/football/42304458

 

There are reports emerging of City players singing the "Park the bus, Man United" song in their dressing room after yesterday's win vs City.
Granted, that any hopes of catching them is a longshot, but I was in Jose and the players' shoes, that would be all the motivation that's required to do everything possible to hunt them down.
Not that it should really an issue at this stage, but whatever they can use to get themselves going is fair game...

 

Its true. Its on either Mendys snap or IG.

 

That's mega bulletin board material. Like that's how they want to get down, it's on then: from the coaching staff to the players. No need to say anything to the press or in public about it either. Keep it in house but that needs to be fuel to the team for the rest of the season, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[emoji50]

Manchester United defender Marcos Rojo is one booking away from a suspension...

... which if you think about it, is pretty impressive considering he played his first match of the domestic season 19 days ago. 😂❌ pic.twitter.com/5A49Xuw5dO

— Football Tweet ⚽ (@Football__Tweet) December 18, 2017

 

While I am pretty frustrated and can understand the criticism regarding our style, it's interesting to note a few stats, which does reflect true progress compared to last season and the previous 3 seasons as well.
After 18 games, we are currently 2nd in the league (41pts), as opposed to 6th at the same stage last term (with just 33pts then). We've scored 39 goals so far, compared to 27 last year (plus the scoring has been spread out as opposed to being mainly on the back of one man as was the case with Zlatan last year).
Defensively, we have conceded just 12x in the league, whereas we conceded 18 goals last year.
And we've done all that missing one of very best players, Pogba, for a fair number of games as well. There is no arguing that this team still is very much a work in progress, that we still need a couple of key additions at least. But we can confidently say we are on the right track. What Pep and City are doing does cast an enormous shadow on everyone else, because it's record breaking and the race for the title is all but done, but if they can the course, the season could still end up being a pretty satisfactory on many levels.
And more importantly, continue the current progression by improving the team personel wise and hopefully in it's approach and style on the pitch.

Edit - Our recent sloppiness on freekicks and corners defensively is something I hope gets fixed ASAP as well. Thought we had that sorted out, but we've clearly gone backwards there. It's nerve grating...

 

Ashur's perspective is spot on.

By almost every metric, we're much improved over last season -- this despite Pogba missing much of the season, Lukaku being relatively shit for a big chunk of the season and Bailly missing quite a few games. And of course, Ibra missing almost all of the season so far and Rojo only now seeing regular action.

Yet what no one foresaw, and no one has seen since the the creation of the English Premier League, is City's phenomenal run in its first 17 games. 16 wins and 1 draw out of 17 games is, literally, unheard of in English football and quite possibly unmatched in the history of club football. True, they haven't won anything yet but they've done more than everything that they could have reasonably done so far this season. There's nothing United could have done about that, especially considering the fact that Pogba was out for that game -- on account an outrageous red card.

I could be wrong about this, but I don't recall anyone here, myself included, looking at United as a lock to win the prem trophy in 17/18. Competitive, of course, and we are competitive...but City are running away with wins at a rate that exceeds that of any other club in the history of English football. At the rate at which City are amassing points they'll even up with 109 points by the end of the season.

At our current rate, United will end the season with 86 points in the prem. There can be no serious complaints with our team performances this season, particularly in light of the toll injuries and suspensions have taken on the squad.

We need to continue performing well in league play but we can forget about chasing down City -- it just aint gonna happen, amigos. We can start taking a few liberties with players to put the strongest squads on the pitch for cup matches. If it were my call I'd bring back AP and TFM in January (if it's possible) and assure them of meaningful action in league and FA Cup games, if for no other reason than to see if those two in particular have what it takes for 18/19. It really isn't too early to start thinking about how we can cope with what is likely to be an even stronger City squad next season.

 

Any other year and we'd be top of the league - Lingard

www.bbc.com/sport/football/42403911

 

Disappointing result today vs Bristol, but in the grand scheme of things, it's really no big deal and it stands to reason that the team will get over it pretty quickly. And honestly, if the League Cup semi was a one off game, I'd fancy our chances to best City, but over a 2 legged tie, just difficult to see how we'd get the better of them.
3 games left this year: away to Leicester this weekend, followed by a couple of home games against Burnley and Soton. 9pts would be the ideal return of course, but it simply can not be anything less than 7. It probably will see us still 2nd in the league and fully ready to take on 2018 on a high note.

 

six hundred odd million spend and still can't even decently compete in a second tier cup game...

 

The quad was never realistic to begin with, the goals for this season are the following:

1. Top two in the EPL
2. Semifinal in the CL
3. Semifinal in the FA Cup
4. A few wins in the league cup.

We're at a stage in our return to greatness where, seriously, the league cup is no longer a high priority. It was one of our two cups last season and it's always great to win a cup, but without any question our much higher priorities are the EPL and the CL. It sucks to lose to Bristol, whether it's City or Rovers, but it really doesn't matter and in fact we have inadvertently done ourselves a favor by getting knocked out of the league cup when we did.

We have a potentially monster second half of the season in the Champions League and if we make the run I think we're capable of making I seriously doubt we'll be worrying that much about the fact that we got dumped out of the Carabao Cup.