NO. NO. NO. we've seen mata centrally, he sprays the ball wide and hides further forward than his no 9. he's a poacher no 10. he doesn't come back to the ball because he's too weak to shield defenders and not elusive enough with the ball to dribble past guys. he passes the ball as soon as someone gets near him. i'd rather play pereira in the hole.
We needed Mourinho after Fergie, not right now. Agreed. Mata is another legacy of letting Moyes go and waste money.
When Jedinak came in I thought it was funny how CP's captain doesn't really start that much anymore and just comes on in the 80+ minute. Seems like Palace have benefited all season from that move.
He hasn't been the problem this year and is better suited centrally. I agree that we should put Lingard on the right but would swap out Herrera (not because I don't rate him but Mata is the better 10). When everyone is healthy it should be Martial up top with Memphis and Lingard on the wings with Mata in front of Schmidfield.
agreed. Herrera should play a midfield. Mata can do better as long as others can create space for him. LvG's tactics is too slow and too conservative. In cup competitions it might be useful, but in long term just won't work in PL.
Having a defensively solid team that is impotent in attack wins you nothing. I have no problem with his boring, safe possession nonsense but only when we have the attack to win games regardless. LvG and Woodward have botched our attacking signings and approached this 'transition' in the wrong way. We will struggle to attract the attacking players we require while continuing to play this dross and struggling to hold onto 4th place. His philosophy is ill suited to the open style of play in the Premier League, particularly this season.
To have a chance at solving this, we should start by changing the double pivot. Replace Schwein with Ander. Mata in hole. Martial top. Choose your wingers from Memphis, Young, Lingard. That would be more athletic and more creative than recent lineups. Maybe we could score.
Then you don't send out all your other attacking option, including your #11 on loan. Why did we ship out RVP again?
Not ready to completely leave Woodward off the hook ( his relentless pursuit of top players that are not available is unnecessary and takes his focus away from real, actual targets) but he has to be given some credit for the job he's done. It's clear that the rebuilding job is bigger than any of us thought. Just about SAF's entire Prem winning team is gone now and some of the remaining guys, are looking more and more like they're done as well. The point is that the rebuilding job will continue in the next 2 transfer windows (at least definitely in the summer). Despite all the players brought in and all the money spent, at minimum, we're still in need of: a top shelf CB and 2 forwards (one guy who can play on the wing and a striker). That is the bare minimum and we might need more. Just wish that Woodward can stop with his infatuation for big names (whole it would be nice to sign them, most of them are just not in places where they would leave for United) and put all his energy and focus on guys who are on the verge (like Martial was this summer) and guys from smaller clubs who are ready to step up to a big club. His and Van Gaal's work in that dept is far from done, of that there is little doubt but it should really put in perspective how monumental a task rebuilding our squad has been...
united has always been about width and pace. this is kinda sad, actually. the boys in blue are playing the united way.
But he'd be an option. I don't care who else we kept, but we let 3 strikers go and replaced them with a kid. A very good kid, but he is only one person and Rooney can't even play football anymore.
The fact of the matter remains that they are weaker opposition than what we faced lately. The table and their results suggest as much. And I'm simply suggesting that we try something different in hopes of getting different results. It's obvious that status quo is not getting is anywhere. Whether Van Gaal will do it or not is not something I can predict, but I see nothing wrong with giving it a shot as it can't be worse than what we've seen lately. And if it weren't to work, at least we would have given it a try...
This shit keeps happening over and over, unless something changes the causes wont change and the discussion should not either. We have no attacking talent or intent but lets talk about something else.
As much of rat as he was/is, I couldn't help but think this front 4 would work if ADM was still lingering around. Granted we may not have moved for Martial.
Lvg needs a (or two of) Reus calibre attacker for his "philosophy" to work. It is beyond me why he decided to go and buy Memphis given that. He is the Spanish Rooney. Pads up decent stats eventually but passenger for most of the game. Never a Lvg player.
Herrera should start every game. We can compete with Chelsea that way. 29% of the time he starts, he wins every time. Edit: Not to mention that horrible flap at Martial's cross and disgusting dive.
Personally I don't think anyone's playing particularly bad, except Rooney of course. The problem is LVG's tactics. When we have ball our 4 defenders and 2 DMs do very little moving forward. This leaves us only 4 players on the other half, everyone's so isolated that there's no connection or whatsoever between them. At least make Rojo and Darmian do some overlapping and create a little space for Wings.
United is in a very bad form recently. I think that Rooney should be dropped, because he is clearly NOT in form!