Football - clouds on the optimism horizon

[Mme Erzulie]

Most of the game? Come, now. You were on the front foot for the first 15-20 minutes, all the while getting one shot on goal. After that, you had literally nothing. Not that we covered ourselves in glory, but at least De Gea had to make two wonder saves (people seem to underestimate how good the save from Can's shot was) to save the point.

We won every stat except the one that counts, had more possession, more touches in the box, more shots on target, more passes etc. 

I don't know by what metric ManU were the "better, more attacking team" in this match unless you turned off after 20 minutes.

We sorely missed Gini and Lallana, and instantly looked so much more fluid and dangerous once the latter came on, but we still should have done better against ManU's 6-3-1 formation. Can was rusty and Sturridge keeps looking like a square peg. Not sure he'll stay with the club past January.

The defense was the only real positive. I was expecting us to be more troubled by the physical and aerial strength of Zlatan, Fellaini, Pogba et al, but apart from that one sublime cross from Pogba which Zlatan should have put away, we were never really shaken. Apart from when Karius decided to cement the impression of himself as Miggers 2.0. They really do seem to have very similar strengths and weaknesses.

[Calibandar]

Disappointing game again. There was a lot of tension throughout but so little in the way of good football.

What was obvious is that these two teams cancel each other out. There is a lot of quality on the pitch on both sides and they were very evenly matched. I felt that neither side was really going for a win.

Having said that, if any team deserved a win it was Liverpool, because De Gea had to do two extraordinary saves. The Coutinho shot was incredible. United on the other hand created very little but was sound defensively.

All in all it remains very tight in the top 7. 

[Mark Antony]

Yeah not seeing how anyone could say United were the more attacking team. 

Not saying Liverpool shouldn't have done more but United were pretty clearly content with the draw and sat back the entire second half.

[Mexal]

Great weekend for Arsenal. They win and everyone else draws. More of those weekends please.

[baxus]

3 hours ago, Mark Antony said:

Yeah not seeing how anyone could say United were the more attacking team. 

With 35% possession, there is no way United can be counted as the more attacking team.

I'm not a fan of the possession stat to prove a team was better because defensive part of the game is at least as important as attacking part and scoring a goal on counter attack counts the same as scoring a goal from dominating the game. But we're not discussing who played better, but who was attacking more and it definitely wasn't United.

I've also read that United's players had a total of 6 touches in Liverpool's box for the whole game.

Stats don't back up the story of United's attacking play at Anfield.

Either way, the match was as boring as any I'd ever seen in the Premiership. It was definitely not only because of United.

[Iskaral Pust]

The question now for me is whether we'll look for a new top striker to replace Sturridge, who doesn't seem to want to adapt at all.  We could stick with developing Origi and let Ings get some minutes (he's now scoring bucketfuls for the U-23 team), or should we look for someone like Costa?  Firmino is great as a false 9, but he can also play as a #10 or left forward and we could use some more goal threat against these small teams playing for a draw. 

Sturridge was poor yesterday but at least some of that was the disrupted midfield.