Premier League 2022/23: Man City vs Man Utd ~ Sun 2nd Oct 2pm KO

An incident a few minutes ago summed up Rashford, Ederson miscues his kick and it loops up high in the air. Rashford stands still and does not even challenge the defender for the ball in the City box.

5th goal was a joke.

Eriksen and Sancho both bullied off the ball then City rip straight through us.

Physically weak.
 
I know Eriksen and McT have done well as a pair but this was a totally different kettle of fish. Obviously in hindsight but should have been Casemiro and McT to at least try and make us a little more solid.
 
We've gone back to not being able to trust some of our players. Another poor moment where Sancho let Akanji run past him and drive into our half.
 
McT can’t be in the side going forward he is nowhere near good enough.

Casemiro and Fred for me away from home, play Eriksen at home.

City just to good for us today that spell just before half time they blew us away with quality and we had no answer for it.
 
City blew us away and we scored a couple at the end when they were well and truly back at home with their slippers on.

Martial with a good cameo. Antony with a world class finish.

City are going to do this to most sides these season so in the grand scheme of things it isn’t too bad. However, the manner of our first half massacre was disappointing.

Two minutes added on though was ridiculous! Definitely someone was in the referee’s room at the beginning of the game with a suitcase full of cash.
 
We’ve only just gone and put 3 past City at their place. Martial looks reborn and if he wasn’t injured to start the season we’d probably be on maximum points. Antony looks an inspired signing. What a finish on his sublime left peg!! We’ve put 8 past City, Arsenal and Liverpool. ETH for LIFE!!!!

Wait. What? Oh…
 
I know Eriksen and McT have done well as a pair but this was a totally different kettle of fish. Obviously in hindsight but should have been Casemiro and McT to at least try and make us a little more solid.

Hindsight? It was clear from the get go he's a liability defensively.

Unfortunately United fans don't want to be realistic and decided he was great and don't accept that he's clearly a liability defensively and hopefully today they realise such and stop the ridiculous praise of him and grow up.

I've no doubt they'll continue to defend him though.
 
Hindsight? It was clear from the get go he's a liability defensively.

Unfortunately United fans don't want to be realistic and decided he was great and don't accept that he's clearly a liability defensively and hopefully today they realise such and stop the ridiculous praise of him and grow up.

I've no doubt they'll continue to defend him though.
I don't think any of us considered him a defensive midfielder, he didn't have a great game today, but in recent games his link play with Bruno has been good.
 
The praise he’s received so far isn’t ridiculous, it’s been well earned. However, today he was a defensive liability and didn’t influence the game whatsoever. I agree that in the big games he shouldn’t be starting as a two because better teams will cut through our midfield.
 
Perhaps I'm wrong and United fans haven't ignored the fact he's a defensive liability
 
It's small things but I felt the ref didn't help us yesterday booking Dalot for his first tackle and not stopping the game when Varane was clearly injured. It was a ball Dalot had to go for but he got their late but normally in the first minute you get a free one the ref was clearly setting a marker. I know the rules say only stop it when it's a head injury but he allowed City to play on for ages with one of our players collapsed in a heap on the edge of our own box.

I do think something that needs to be said is the manager got it wrong he will need to learn from that you can't go that attacking against Man City. Maybe it was a lesson he needed to see to learn from but I don't think we'll see a team that attacking play against City for a while.

The other side of it was the first half City were just "on it" that might be the best half of football they play all season. Even Grealish who at times struggles since joining City was at his very best. He stayed out on the touch line which gave Dalot major problems as Bernardo and Cancelo kept joining him and Anthony didn't really get back and help him. You can't defend Grealish one vs one he's to good you need numbers.

We kept Haaland quiet with Varane on the pitch but the moment he went off for treatment Haaland was suddenly off the leash and in a few minutes he completely destroyed us and won the game for City.
 
not for the first ETH made some key mistakes. Hopefully he'll earn from it.

Everyone bar Martial walks away knowing they didn't turn up. Nothing else to say apart from shameful.
 
I don't think De Gea or the defence deserve much flack to be honest which is mad for a team that let in 6.

The game was lost in midfield and attack for us.

No pressure on the ball allowed quality players to pick us off.

The only goal where the defence were a touch sloppy was the 6th goal where Shaw got caught behind the line (something he does a lot) and played Foden onside.
 
It's small things but I felt the ref didn't help us yesterday booking Dalot for his first tackle and not stopping the game when Varane was clearly injured. It was a ball Dalot had to go for but he got their late but normally in the first minute you get a free one the ref was clearly setting a marker. I know the rules say only stop it when it's a head injury but he allowed City to play on for ages with one of our players collapsed in a heap on the edge of our own box.

I do think something that needs to be said is the manager got it wrong he will need to learn from that you can't go that attacking against Man City. Maybe it was a lesson he needed to see to learn from but I don't think we'll see a team that attacking play against City for a while.

The other side of it was the first half City were just "on it" that might be the best half of football they play all season. Even Grealish who at times struggles since joining City was at his very best. He stayed out on the touch line which gave Dalot major problems as Bernardo and Cancelo kept joining him and Anthony didn't really get back and help him. You can't defend Grealish one vs one he's to good you need numbers.

We kept Haaland quiet with Varane on the pitch but the moment he went off for treatment Haaland was suddenly off the leash and in a few minutes he completely destroyed us and won the game for City.
I don't think even a good ref would have made a difference here to be honest it was men against boys.

You also can't blame the ref for not stopping when player was down due to the ridiculous play acting that is all over the Premier League....its the boy who called wolf....

If you are saying that United were 'going attacking' I must assume that that was on paper only because there was no evidence of attacking play yesterday as we had no possession from the first seconds.

I also feel your assessment of Varane's effect on Haaland is incredibly generous and hard to qualify.

It was nothing short of an embarrassment. Sorry to be so disagreeable, I admire your efforts to polish the turd but apart from Antony's screamer there is nothing positive to take from yesterday's performance.
 
I don't think even a good ref would have made a difference here to be honest it was men against boys.

You also can't blame the ref for not stopping when player was down due to the ridiculous play acting that is all over the Premier League....its the boy who called wolf....

If you are saying that United were 'going attacking' I must assume that that was on paper only because there was no evidence of attacking play yesterday as we had no possession from the first seconds.

I also feel your assessment of Varane's effect on Haaland is incredibly generous and hard to qualify.

It was nothing short of an embarrassment. Sorry to be so disagreeable, I admire your efforts to polish the turd but apart from Antony's screamer there is nothing positive to take from yesterday's performance.

This is where the rule is let down though. All players do now when they're faking is grab their head to get the game stopped. Varane clearly had an ankle problem but City wanted to play on (why wouldn't you when the best opposition defender is on the floor) it felt to me like they had 30 seconds and two or three waves of attack with our man clearly injured. The ref's first obligation is to protect the safety of the players. Varane being on the floor in that position was clear grounds to stop the game. After the initial City attack he should have stopped the game. Nothing about that Varane situation made me think he was faking it he was clearly hurt.

I just felt that plus the first minute booking for Dalot was the ref being against us from the first minute has wasn't willing to give us anything.

Well looking at that line up he's picked 3 forwards and 2 attacking midfield players. On paper that's matching City's line up. The difference was our midfield/attacking players couldn't string 2 passes together whereas City's players kept the ball superbly. They were an absolute class above they rushed Utd into making mistakes when we had the ball and in possession played really quick short passing moves where Utd's attacking players just tried to go direct.

Up until his 1st goal Haaland was not in the game at all he wasn't involved in anything City did.

If City play that well against any side in this league for 45 minutes they'll blow anyone away. No one could live with what they did first half. The first goal Eriksen makes a small mistake but even then it's ruthlessly punished the 3 goals that came after I'm not really sure what you can do to defend that.

It was largely meaningless as the game was done but unlike Brentford they at least tried to fight back they didn't just give up and down tools but on the day the opponent was just way to good for us.

We just have to accept that right now the gap between us and them is huge, the performance from us yesterday was still better than the two performances vs City last season.
 
It's strange, because had some time travelling mystic came on here on Wed and said that we'd score three in one half, including a screamer from Antony and two for Martial off the bench, we'd have predicted a very different match. And yet, despite exactly that happening, there wasn't a single minute of that match where we were realistically in it.

I don't remember the last time we scored 3 and were so obviously outclassed. The Beckham/Original Ronaldo 4-3 perhaps? I mean, at least we won the second leg. This was a footballing lesson from the first minute to the last.

My biggest take away from this is going to be Casemiro. You'd have thought this would be a match that was crying out for a defensive stopper in the middle of the park. Perhaps ETH saw the match going differently when he named his starting XI, but after 15 min (even earlier probably) he's got to realize what's happening and make an early change.

1. Is Casemiro not as good as I'm thinking he should be?
2. Is he unfit/injured/tactically unable to cope with a new system?
3. Was he not ETH's signing?
4. What else am I not noticing?

This was lost in midfield, and our lack thereof. I won't pretend to be the FdJ expert, but I'm not sure how he would've made much of a difference yesterday. Ok, obviously the ability to retain some modicum of possession would've helped, but would he have been able to release Sancho/Antony/Rashford on the counter? Even if he manages to pin them back slightly, it doesn't stop them from waltzing through the midfield and playing through us at will. Surely a player like Casemiro was what was required in a midfield 3, snap at a few heels. Something. Anything.
 
I think FDJ would be in the Eriksen role had he signed.

I think we just have to assume he was backing a winning side it didn’t work hopefully he will learn from it.

Even if we’d gone more defensive City might still have destroyed us first half they were unreal.

I think away from home to the top sides going forward if everyone is fit we will likely see a different line up In the midfield and attacking positions. It’ll still be 4-2-3-1 but with different players.

Fred Casemiro

Anthony Bruno/Eriksen Rashford/Sancho

Martial
 
I think so too, but what difference would having FdJ over CE have made? City might very well have been unplayable in that first half, but playing three wingers and two number 10s was the stuff of Kevin Keegan's fever dreams. I'd understand keeping a winning lineup, but take out one of the wingers and insert Casemiro into midfield. Bring on the dropped winger when the game is stretched and we are chasing something.

I don't understand, but see what ETH learns from this.
 
I think FDJ tracks Foden on the first goal and probably retains the ball a bit better when we do get hold of it but he isn’t going to stop our attacking players crapping it every time they got the ball. Maybe it’s only 2-0 rather than 4-0 at half time but the way City played first half they’d have rattled in a few goals against anyone they were superb.

My guess is they’ll hand out similar beatings to the other big six this season if they play like that. Haaland has given them a new angle of attack they can’t still do the death by 1000 passes but they can also now power through you in a way they couldn’t before.

Utd need to put it behind them quickly and focus on the upcoming games which are all winnable.
 
I think so too, but what difference would having FdJ over CE have made? City might very well have been unplayable in that first half, but playing three wingers and two number 10s was the stuff of Kevin Keegan's fever dreams. I'd understand keeping a winning lineup, but take out one of the wingers and insert Casemiro into midfield. Bring on the dropped winger when the game is stretched and we are chasing something.

I don't understand, but see what ETH learns from this.

I agree, those wingers don't work hard enough defensively
 
I dunno part of the modern game I think you want the wingers to stay up high so if you win the ball you are ready to counter. If they come back to far you end up with no one to pass to if the ball is won.

Where the wingers need to be better is they need to look after the ball better when it does come to them. Anthony/Rashford/Sancho were all poor the ball bounced off them to often and the decision making was poor.
 
If they are high up the pitch and we are expecting them not to track back too much, then they need to ensure they press hard, which they failed to do on Sunday. It was so easy for the City defence.
 
If they are high up the pitch and we are expecting them not to track back too much, then they need to ensure they press hard, which they failed to do on Sunday. It was so easy for the City defence.

You can only press if the midfield and defence are up behind you, pressing without the midfield backing you up is pointless. Teams just pass it around you. I don't think Utd were looking to press from the front in this game the plan was sit deep and counter similar to Arsenal and Liverpool.

The pressing has stopped in recent months because the defence has dropped back because we saw in the first two games if we give teams space in behind us they'll run riot.

The issue I felt was the balls we were playing to get in behind were awful. City's defence didn't try to play offside when Utd won the ball they knew the ball was coming quickly so they dropped off a few yards meaning there was no chance of getting the ball in behind them. We couldn't get that link between Eriksen and Bruno going so the through balls we were attempting were coming from deep rather than being played high up the pitch.

One vs One the City defenders won the battles they didn't give our attacking players a sniff, we got a bit more joy once Walker went off but still the City players were winning the battles. At the other end ours weren't.
 
Friggin embarrassing ... paying for a ticket, then running home to Mummy before half-time as many did ... 'The 58' or whatever the feck they are called, and similar groups wouldn't have needed Viagra on Sunday night that's for sure ....

And if anything summed up what a complete coward De Gea is, it was the 3rd goal, yes we were getting outplayed, no shame in that as they are by far the best team in Europe and have been for some time, BUT, we were still in the game, get to HT @ 2-0, regroup, and if we had got the next goal anything could have happened....

Varane, our tallest defender, our most dominant in the air is off the pitch injured, and what does brave Dave do as Haaland scores from the middle of the 6 yard box, sod all that's what, Schmeichel, vd Sar, hell even Paddy Roche would have come off their line, caught the ball easily, and knocked Haaland into the middle of next week in the process, but I suppose if you'd paid £75 for a haircut and beard trim on the morning of the game you wouldn't want to mess it up ...
 

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