Premier League: Spurs vs Manchester United (Friday June 19th)

Yes, I expected more from United tonight and I expect more going forward. Too many players certainly looking rusty.
No one has mentioned Rashford? He was shit!
 
Don’t think many had stand out games only Fernandes of the starters stood out but even he looked rusty and a bit sloppy.

Back 4 were pretty poor I thought both full backs gave no quality going forward and the front 3 that started all had stinkers. Martial and James almost invisible all game just not at it.

Hopefully next game he risks Pogba and Greenwood from the start and look to really go after Sheffield Utd think we showed them to much respect today with that starting XI.
 
If Martial doesn't put in a performance he should be benched until he gets the message of what is required to stay in this progressive squad.
We cannot continue to put up with his lazy arse performances and blowing cold more than hot.
He needs to be benched for the next game. Just not good enough!
 
He needs to be benched for the next game. Just not good enough!

For who though? Ighalo still looks like an impact player to me.

No point canning players after 1 game after 3 months off.

I’d still start him in the next one get Greenwood in for James in that front 3
 
For who though? Ighalo still looks like an impact player to me.

No point canning players after 1 game after 3 months off.

I’d still start him in the next one get Greenwood in for James in that front 3
Phil Jones
 
Hindsight is wonderful, you wouldnt know what would have happened if Pogba started, he had a point to prove.

You can only call it hindsight if I didn’t say before the game he has to start
 
I’d love to see us play Rashford through the middle. Martial isn’t of the required quality. Never has been.
 
And as poor as Rashford was he was still our 3rd best player.

That ball Pogba played out to the left wing on the half volley was ridiculous. It’s the sort of thing you play on a computer game and are proud of.
 
You can only call it hindsight if I didn’t say before the game he has to start
Oh agreed, I am not saying you didn’t call for it since before the game. Just saying, you don’t actually know how it may have panned out had he started.
Had he started and we never got our noses in front, do you take him off? Do you risk him for the whole 90mins? If so, are you going to slaughter the manager when he breaks down with an injury because he didn’t ease him in?
 
Oh agreed, I am not saying you didn’t call for it since before the game. Just saying, you don’t actually know how it may have panned out had he started.
Had he started and we never got our noses in front, do you take him off? Do you risk him for the whole 90mins? If so, are you going to slaughter the manager when he breaks down with an injury because he didn’t ease him in?

Oh he could have started. Pulled up 5 mins in and got a broken leg. However I don’t think there is any difference between 3 months off and 5 months off. Once you’re over 4 weeks you’re not match fit. So it was cutting his nose to spite his face to make a point.
 
We were the better team for almost the entire game. Maguire took a nap and we got scored on. I wasn't really concentrating on our forwards' off the ball stuff, as I was intent on trying to figure out just WTF Fred was doing, but I remember when the ball came to Martial about 35 minutes into the game, I was surprised he was playing - I completely forgot about him.

I put these 2 dropped points on Ole's poor lineup. Why not give Pogba the full 2nd half if he's not going to start? James ran around like a wild puppy, full of enthusiasm and a total try-hard, but no end product. By the second half it was obvious Plan A wasn't working, that James, Fred, and Martial had to come off. Ole has to decide what kind of attack we are going with, if he wants wingers or not, if he wants attacking full backs or not, if he wants balls over the top or he wants his CF playing back to goal. We did a mishmash of tactics out there today and it didn't work.

This is a side that is nowhere near good enough. I guess I forgot how bad some of these players were, or at least how raw. I get it, they were on a long break, but they didn't exactly come back rejuvenated. We need a right wing, we need a CF, and we need whatever position Fred is ostensibly playing.
 
Put Rashford in the middle and who goes wide?

I think Rashford has played his best stuff wide left but I am still to be totally convinced by Martial in the middle, still think we have to sort the right side first, if there’s money left after that then a striker has to be next.

Wasn’t an easy game for Martial as Spurs were so deep but he had 2 good chances the keeper made a good save from one and a bad touch allowed the defender to close him down on the second one.

As for the line up I think he got it about right having lots of firepower off the bench was the plan my guess is he hoped to keep it tight first hour let Spurs burn out then blow them away late on. Giving away a cheap goal like we did isn’t really on him that’s just poor play by his players.
 
I don’t read too much into the game last night about who should be dropped as it’s essentially the first game of a season with the break we’ve had. There is going to be signs of rust. Rashford was bright but faded and his heavy touch from the wonderful pass from Pogba highlighted that. Martial was poor but for a worldly save would have scored. James was awful but this wasn’t the game for him - Greenwood should have started as we knew Spurs would park the bus and it didn’t a bit more invention.

In the midfield, McT was good but again faded. Fred was so poor. Pogba and Fernandes were a class above and have to start together from now on. Personally the midfield of Pogba, Fernandes and Matic should be the trio going forward.

Onto Sheffield United, then Brighton. Should be picking up six points from them.
 
My only issue with that midfield 3 is it leaves matic with a lot of defensive work to do. With his age and qlack of speed that might be an issue. In my own head I wanted to go with a 4 4 2 diamond last night which got pogba and bruno in whilst keeping a bit of defensive cover. Of course the compromise is you lose width.
 
Issue with the diamond is our full backs are not great going forward so we become very narrow.

I think it needs to be a bit horses for courses in games vs stronger sides we aren’t good enough to play 4-3-3 with Pogba and Bruno both pushing on but if we can get 4-2-3-1 working with Pogba playing the sort of role he does for France it could. The issue is for France he has Kante with him who can do the defensive work on his own because Pogba does switch off defensively at times. I’m not convinced any of our other midfielders are specialist ball winners to me they are all box to box decent all rounders.

The issue for me is James can’t start games on the right just isn’t good enough but the alternatives are lingard, Mata, Periera or gamble on Greenwood. I think it’s time to take that gamble give Greenwood some games from the start and see what he can do.

It’s one game after a 3 month break so no need to think radical the same problems we had before lockdown haven’t really gone away.
 
I think Pogba and Bruno are good enough defensively to work alongside Fred or Matic. However we want to be controlling games not always thinking about the opposition and what we do off the ball and if we can’t get those two on the pitch with our other CM’s and Pogba is staying then a defensive CM becomes a priority because our two best players have to be able to play on the same pitch at all times.

City play with Silva and De Bruyne all the time and make it work. We need to be able to do similar with our best two players.
 
We were all disappointed not to take full points, but it is another day and we are better than that performance.
We were playing a team who made it very difficult by sitting deep after scoring a fortunate goal caused by our own individual errors.
With a bit more match sharpness we would have taken the points when Spurs came out after the equaliser.

Upwards and onwards
 
I agree longer term utd have got to become a dominant possession team nothing wrong with hitting teams on the counter but we have to develop a style of play where we dominate the ball against almost anyone but also have the cutting edge to create chances.

I think to play the way City play with that many attacking players you really need to be able to pin the opposition into their own half and never let them out and City are the masters at that.

We allow teams to break out against us a bit to easily we haven’t totally mastered the tactical fouling and we are vulnerable to the long ball out of defence.

It’s a work in progress though things seem to be improving after a poor start.
 
The way I am looking at it is, we would have more to complain about if we were Tottenham, and it's a few years since we were able to say that!
 
Tottenham are in big trouble huge stadium debt, had to borrow of the government which probably means no transfer funds this summer. So it’ll be free transfer, loans or cheap buys.

They might have to sell Kane to try and rebuild.
 
I think they borrowed that as you’re never going to get a £175m loan at 0.5% interest at any other time. The interest rate on the other loan was 2.2% so they’ll use that loan to cover against that. Just Levy being smart surely?
 
The loans are their to help businesses in financial distress survive the impact of Covid, given how quickly they went to furlough my guess is the finances are very tight.

I don’t think it’ll go down well if Spurs suddenly spend £100m on new players this summer as that’s not really surviving that’s investing.

We saw in January they weren’t really prepared to gamble on going for the top 4 by getting in another striker.
 

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