AS Roma v Manchester United Wednesday April 4[R]

Thread title fixed. Away leg, folks, home team listed first.

 

Game is on ESPN2 for us in the States, 1:30 p.m. CT.

 

whats up with evra? i know hes been injured but when is he comming back. he hasnt played in a while and he couldnt even make this thread! hes not in the starting line up! hes not in the subs! hes not in the doubtful! hes not in the injured! maybe hes in france!

 

same formation like the blackburn game.. we should win

 

You could at least have used a pic of one of their current kits.

 

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=418200&cc=5901

Roma players start talking recklessly. Its the first sign of fear.

 

Panucci will get raped.

 

------------VDS-----------

O'Shea---Brown--Rio---Heinze

Park----Carrick--Scholesy---Ronaldo

------Giggs--------Rooney-----

Thats what I expect to see, pretty much what we ended up with at the end of the Blackburn match. I can't believe the amount of injuries we have had recently, coming to the business end of the season. I would have been very confident of beating Roma with everyone fit like a few weeks ago, but it'll be very tough now, and we have a decent chance of the treble again aswel, but we have been lucky with injuries most of the seaon I guess.

I won't be happy with a 0-0 from this though, we need an away goal, but I believe that in every CL game, so 1-0 would be a great result. If they were to get one at OT next week, we would be in trouble. We have quite a conjested week, Roma on wednesday, then Pompey away on friday, Roma at home on Tuesday.

 

It's the CL and we are playing away; that can only mean 4-3-3 / 4-5-1 whether you like it or not.

With all our injuries I think we will see something like this:

----------Rooney------
Ronaldo-------------- Ole/Park
------------------------
----Giggs------Scholes
----------Carrick
------------------------
Heinze--Rio--Brown--O'Shea
-----------VDS-----------

 

I see a couple of comments in this thread suggesting that Man. United have as good as won this tie already. But in case you're still curious about Wednesday's game, these are the two squads that Roma's coach is reportedly considering:

Option 1:

Totti

Mancini Taddei Wilhelmsson

Perrotta De Rossi

Panucci Chivu Mexes Cassetti

Doni
​

The problems with this setup are that (1) Wilhelmsson did not look all that good this past weekend against Milan and (2) it would be a big loss to take Perrotta out of his typical role and move him to a position that he might not be well suited to.


Option 2:

Totti

Mancini Perrotta Taddei

De Rossi Chivu

Panucci Ferrari Mexes Cassetti

Doni​

With this option, only one player (Chivu) would have to play out of his typical position. The catch is that Ferrari had his knee scoped last week, and it's not certain that he'll be fit.

BTW, I haven't seen those comments from Panucci and Mancini reported on any Italian websites; is the Daily Mail a reputable source?

 

Uh, where? Between our injury situation and performances in the CL thus far, I don't think anyone considers this tie "as good as won". We might be favorites on paper, but no one is looking past Roma.

 

Right there.

 

And there.

 

ha, yeah, well the way I look at it, treesnake, is that it is united's board, so if some of the posters get a little out of control and carried away, they're entitled to that, so no worries. Admittedly, united on paper is the favorites, also, but i think it should be a good tie.

 

I really can't wait until this round is over.

With our defensive losses and considering this is an away-leg, I wouldn't be upset with a draw. If they were in equal health, I would prefer Evra for this game, but I think you have to play who's hot, so it's Heinze. I'd like to see Ole get some minutes up front, too; he looked really good in his several minutes this weekend, and the CL always brings out something better in him. Despite our prolificly scoring midfield (thanks for the stats Billy), we still need some fire up front. On that note, I'd really like to see Rooney finish one in this game. I predict 1-2 (Totti - Rooney, Scholes).

 

That's having a positive outlook, not acting like the tie is over.

Even the posters you quoted will expect this to be a tough match.

 

Okay, whatever. That's obviously not how I read the comments, but I'll take your word for it. I just wanted to pass on some information about what Roma is thinking, not start a fight with you people.

BTW, there has apparently been a suggestion in the Italian press that Carrick is the weak link, so that Roma will design their game plan around exploiting him. Don't know if that's wise, or how it would work....

 

No problem. TBH, I just don't want to give the impression that we don't respect Roma--we do (plus I don't like Lazio ), and I expect SAF to treat this as such.

Since you might be more familiar with Italian football, I'll tell you that Carrick is basically our Pirlo. He's our distributor, our "key to unlocking the defense". etc. Great passer with either foot, good positioning as well. His weakness (although he has improved here) is his defense. But if he and Scholes can position themselves well, it gives us another attacking option, much as we saw on the weekend against Blackburn.

 

I think whilst carrick has had a good debut season with us, sometimes during pressure games or pressure situations his performace levels drop, like he starts to misplace a lot of passes and harried off the ball, two occasions which spring to mind are 2nd half in FA cup v middlesbrough 1st leg and in the Liverpool game. We really need a solid performance from him on wednesday, and if hes given space to find his passing then i think he'll do just fine.

 

The Roma player most likely to be called on to "press" Carrick would be De Rossi. He typically plays as a holding midfielder, with David Pizarro serving as the Pirlo-style distributor. The problem for Roma is that Pizarro is suspended for the first leg, so De Rossi will have to take over some of his playmaking role. De Rossi can certainly handle that (it was his role for Italy against Scotland last week, when he was partnered with Gattuso), but he probably can't be asked BOTH to press AND to distribute. So, even if Roma sees Carrick as the weak link (and, again, that is really just speculation by the Italian press), they might not have the manpower to exploit him, anyway.

 

I think Roma would probably be better advised to 'design their game plan around' stopping Ronaldo and Scholes, rather than exploiting Carrick.

 

I'm glad I'm not the one responsible for making that gameplan. The difficulty in that lies somewhere between say, squaring the circle and trisecting an arbitrary angle.