Football - Stolen Taxi for Pardew

[polishgenius]

Tell you who's been shite though, Sanchez. Get Lingard on and we could knock a couple more in.

[Jordan La Cabra]

Sanchez has been quiet but his ball for Mata’s miss was brilliant. 

[Disturber of Peace]

Zlatan would not be able to backheel it better.

[AncalagonTheBlack]

haha...only way to score with almost 6 people parking the bus....C'mon!

[Mark Antony]

TAA/Lovren got exposed. Matip should probably be in over Lovren imo despite Lovrens patches of good form he always has games like these in him. Hopefully Clyne is ready before the end of the season. 

Rare poor game from Salah. Bobby wasn’t at his best either. Gini is about the worst possible game changing sub you can make. 

[polishgenius]

Just now, Mark Antony said:

Rare poor game from Salah.

Ashley Young was brilliant today, to be fair.

Wasn't fond of Mourinho's changes and sitting back yet again, but we pulled it out this time.

[Consigliere]

Not pretty but very effective and another big result for us. We've got some breathing room to 5th place now. So happy for Rashford. He made a huge impact when he came on against Palace and was excellent today as well. Great to see him come back strong after a poor patch of form. We defended well and had Liverpool's creative players/forwards pocketed for the most part. Lukaku's general play (link up, build up, creative play) has improved a lot over the course of the season and he works hard as well. Such a good player who often doesn't get the credit he deserves. 

 

[AncalagonTheBlack]

3 minutes ago, Mark Antony said:

 Gini is about the worst possible game changing sub you can make. 

Is this really surprising? All of our midfield players are there to make up the numbers.They don;t have a single creative bone in their body.I hope Klopp comes to his senses and gets us some creative types for next season.Otherwise it will be the same ol' same ol'.

[Iskaral Pust]

I just woke up and saw the result.  Gutted but not shocked that Mourinho pulled off a win relying on a striker who’s hardly scored in months.  Utd are always jammy. 

Also not shocked that TAA was a weak link defensively, even though he played well against Utd before. I thought Lovren would handle Lukaku though.  I doubt Matip would have done better against a fast, physical opponent. 

Liverpool post-match comments are complaining about penalties and cards not awarded, but that always goes Utd’s way too.  Just like Spurs.  I thought we’d be able to outplay them but you cannot afford to concede early to a parked bus. 

[Consigliere]

1 minute ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

Is this really surprising? All of our midfield players are there to make up the numbers.They don;t have a single creative bone in their body.I hope Klopp comes to his senses and gets us some creative types for next season.Otherwise it will be the same ol' same ol'.

I've read that Jorginho is a target and Lemar remains a possibility as well. If your lot can pull that off and add in Keita joining next year, that looks a better midfield on paper at least. Liverpool do need a creative player to replace Coutinho. He could have made a difference in a game like this. 

We are also badly in need of more creativity in our midfield.

[Consigliere]

3 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

I just woke up and saw the result.  Gutted but not shocked that Mourinho pulled off a win relying on a striker who’s hardly scored in months.  Utd are always jammy. 

Also not shocked that TAA was a weak link defensively, even though he played well against Utd before. I thought Lovren would handle Lukaku though.  I doubt Matip would have done better against a fast, physical opponent. 

Liverpool post-match comments are complaining about penalties and cards not awarded, but that always goes Utd’s way too.  Just like Spurs.  I thought we’d be able to outplay them but you cannot afford to concede early to a parked bus. 

Heh, United "jammy". Your lot couldn't even manage a shot on target with 70%+ possession in the 2nd half and the only goal in your favour was an own goal. Had Liverpool gotten anything out of this game it would have been "jammy". We had your forwards pocketed. Granted, there was nothing flashy about our play and we sat deep but that has proven to be an effective strategy against Liverpool time and again. Sorry we didn't play into your hands. 

[The Winged Shadow]

Ox and Trent should not have started together. That right wing was too imbalanced. Too attacking against a team like United. Pool should have stuck with the same idea as in the first game, play with 3 controlling mid to stop counters and cover the fullbacks if a counter goes through. TAA got exposed because Ox was pretty awful with his positioning and wasn't there to help him (as Salah usually doesn't track too far back). This is why Gini is important in that midfield. He usually doesn't go too far up and slows the counter pretty effectively and provides cover for the fullback. Which is largely his role. Not a creative midfielder. Lallana did well when he came on and probably should've started. Gomez as well. I think Pool was a bit too naive today with their overall setup.

Forward three didn't click at all today either. Too many link-up attempts that didn't work because they weren't on the same wavelength. Pretty poor with the final ball as well. It was pretty frustrating to watch. But some of that should be credited to Matic and McTominay. They did well to help out their fullbacks when Mane/Salah tried to cut in and play a pass.

Spurs win will mean we'll get knocked down to 4th. What a shit weekend this turned out to be

[polishgenius]

31 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

Liverpool post-match comments are complaining about penalties and cards not awarded, but that always goes Utd’s way too.  Just like Spurs.

The only thing in that regard that Liverpool can really complain about is the Valencia challenge. And Liverpool got away with the odd one themselves, particularly Lovren when he committed two potentially yellowable challenge in five seconds on Fellaini and didn't get a card. But you'd know that if you'd bothered to watch it.

The second half was annoying and frustratingly Mourinho but we absolutely pantsed you in the first half, there was nothing jammy or bus-parky about it. Not pretty, but not defensive.

[Jordan La Cabra]

That was then kind of performance I was used to seeing from Mourinho’s Chelsea teams.

Over the course of 90 minutes, United were hardly exciting, but they did play well in the first half: they got an early lead, doubled it and then sat back to keep it. 

You can pick out many of Chelsea’s performances from 2014/15 season and they’d be identical to United today. Only thing is, we were consistently doing that, especially against our rivals.

We see people talk so much about what Klopp, Poch and Guardiola bring to this league, with their teams playing exciting football. It’s almost as if people act like Jose has been left behind while these new younger managers bring something completely different to what he does. But if a Mourinho team plays the way United did today 28-30 games a season, they win the league, as he did with us in 05, 06 & 15. 

Consistency is this United team’s problem. But if they can consistently churn out performances like today next season, they can 100% win the league.

It may not be as pretty as Pep, Poch or Klopp, but Jose knows what he is doing.

 

[Spockydog]

Mourinho on Bailly: "Fantastic performance, amazing goal." 

[Consigliere]

Great win for Newcastle. Kenedy, in terms of end product, looks to be much better than Atsu.

 

1 hour ago, JordanJH1993 said:

You can pick out many of Chelsea’s performances from 2014/15 season and they’d be identical to United today. Only thing is, we were consistently doing that, especially against our rivals.

Yeah, I was expecting this sort of thing when Mourinho came in. Don't think any reasonable United supporter felt that Mourinho would bring attacking, free flowing football. The problem I have is that Mourinho's Chelsea teams actually looked like they had an attacking game plan and generally controlled games much better than what he has been able to achieve thus far at United. Too often we've looked clueless going forward with poor off the ball movement, lethargic closing down and have had to rely on DDG to bail us out. Today's performance was more along the lines of what I would expect from a Mourinho team. 

[Rorshach]

Looked relatively good today. 

Of course, we’re helped no end by the disapperance of waste-of-space Williams (Jags looked good), and the return of Baines, who would be a better left back that Martina even if he was a one-legged granny with poor bladder control. 

Still, nice to see that we’re looking more composed, that Bolasie can do nice things, and that Tosun is able to score. Can’t understand why Rooney took that penalty ahead of Baines, though. Shitty decision.

Had Samuele had anything to say about it, he should have made it clear that Baines is first, second and third in line for penalty taking. Rooney is a distant 65th.

#Allardiciout!

[A Horse Named Stranger]

5 hours ago, Mark Antony said:

TAA/Lovren got exposed. Matip should probably be in over Lovren imo despite Lovrens patches of good form he always has games like these in him. Hopefully Clyne is ready before the end of the season. 

That was something that I didn't really understand. As I've said a few times, I am quite fan of Matip and his footballing ability, so Lovren being picked ahead of him was something I found a bit weird. But never change a winning team was probably the rational behind it.

5 hours ago, The Winged Shadow said:

Ox and Trent should not have started together. That right wing was too imbalanced. Too attacking against a team like United. Pool should have stuck with the same idea as in the first game, play with 3 controlling mid to stop counters and cover the fullbacks if a counter goes through. TAA got exposed because Ox was pretty awful with his positioning and wasn't there to help him (as Salah usually doesn't track too far back). This is why Gini is important in that midfield. He usually doesn't go too far up and slows the counter pretty effectively and provides cover for the fullback. Which is largely his role. Not a creative midfielder. Lallana did well when he came on and probably should've started. Gomez as well. I think Pool was a bit too naive today with their overall setup.

So your complaint is, that Klopp's Liverpool wanted to play like Klopp's Liverpool and play their game? They went out attacking against Guardiola's City and won, and were on a pretty good run recently.

In all fairness I didn't see the game, as I was at a football game myself, and rushed back to take some petty enjoyment in the disection of Mordor by Bayern (and Bayern didn't disappoint, despite Lewandowski sending a penalty over the crossbar), but to me it sounds more like Liverpool were having problems getting their game going. Maybe a sideeffect from the CL game against Porto, in which Liverpool basically played a non-game. And now they just failed to find the on-switch again. Tough luck this WE was against another top four team. The schedule is a bit kidner to Man City with Stoke, but I wouldn't be too surprised if they showed up in friendly game mode, too.

 

[The Winged Shadow]

5 hours ago, Notone said:

So your complaint is, that Klopp's Liverpool wanted to play like Klopp's Liverpool and play their game? They went out attacking against Guardiola's City and won, and were on a pretty good run recently.

I don't think they played like Liverpool at all* (defensively). In defensive situations it's pretty rare that a Liverpool fullback has to deal with someone 1v1 (i.e. TAA v Rashford) on either wings. One of the midfielders or wingers usually help. TAA didn't get much help as Ox wasn't there to help out (and Salah rarely comes back these days for obvious reasons).

City game is completely different, with lots of space for both sides and usually with Liverpool playing on the counter a bit more. So not really sure how they are comparable. While I would've been fine with Ox and TAA starting against most other defensively set up opponents, United wouldn't be one of them purely due to the individual quality. There aren't that many team who has the quality in that left wing to make me feel this way. Rashford/Martial/Sanchez are all top quality players in that position. I wouldn't want TAA against them 1v1. Gomez and Clyne can generally handle the situation as they are much better defensively.

I just think it would've been better balanced if it was a combination of Ox/Gomez or TAA/Gini (or Hendo centre, Can/TAA on right ). I don't think either setup would've hindered Liverpool's attacking play.

edit: *except for Lovren. That was classic Liverpool

[ants]

Anyone watch the West Ham v Burnley game? The scenes from the crowd were astounding. People running onto the pitch, camping beneath the directors’ box and singing that they’d destroyed the club. 

If it continues like this, West Ham are effectively playing away matches for the rest of the season.