Well that was bad day at the office, some reds have been saying that this result has been coming. I can't say i saw it coming, not in the manner it did anyway. To have hardly really tested their keeper for the 90 minutes with the attacking options we have needs some explaining away.
As usual central midfield has come in for the brunt of the blame, Giggs shouldn't be starting anymore and the usual criticism of Carrick. We weren't great in the middle of the park, but we controlled enough of the game for me. The glaring weakness of yesterday's performance was out wide. Ashley Young gave another pretty innocuous display, but far more worrying has been the deterioration of Antonio Valencia's form. Even his biggest fan would have to admit he is pretty one dimensional, but when on form, boy is that a destructive one dimension. The problem starts when he goes right off the boil. It's not just that he has stopped taking his man on altogether, last night, he wasn't even releasing the ball to Rafael when he tried to take pressure of Valencia by overlapping. He seems to have become almost totally risk averse, squaring up to the full back and passing it back inside.
Of course this is a huge problem when your playing 4-4-2, with no Nani on the bench and off form anyway, maybe it's time to try 4-3-3 or even the diamond for a couple of games. The loss of Rooney can't have helped, he may not always seem at the top of his game, but boy did we miss him yesterday. It's hard to judge our forwards performance when they had such little quality service. But as ever Hernandez put in the sort of display that makes you think he's better coming off the bench in certain games. Kagawa's name seems to have gone off the radar recently, and i'm not sure if he would have made a difference yesterday, but it would be nice to get him back in the thick of things.
I would have liked United to experiment in Turkey in midweek with top spot already sewn up, but i think we've got to put a stop to these pretty soft defeats. Three defeats out of our first twelve fixtures is too big a percentage, at our best we'd have come away with a point a piece from the lost games. Then again with the defensive injury problems we have endured, maybe second in the table a point behind the leaders is as good a position as we have any right to expect.
Yesterday's result was a double blow really, we lost the chance to really pull away from the rent boys and we have probably put real belief back into City's title campaign, as i said at the beginning of the blog, a bad day at the office.
As usual central midfield has come in for the brunt of the blame, Giggs shouldn't be starting anymore and the usual criticism of Carrick. We weren't great in the middle of the park, but we controlled enough of the game for me. The glaring weakness of yesterday's performance was out wide. Ashley Young gave another pretty innocuous display, but far more worrying has been the deterioration of Antonio Valencia's form. Even his biggest fan would have to admit he is pretty one dimensional, but when on form, boy is that a destructive one dimension. The problem starts when he goes right off the boil. It's not just that he has stopped taking his man on altogether, last night, he wasn't even releasing the ball to Rafael when he tried to take pressure of Valencia by overlapping. He seems to have become almost totally risk averse, squaring up to the full back and passing it back inside.
Of course this is a huge problem when your playing 4-4-2, with no Nani on the bench and off form anyway, maybe it's time to try 4-3-3 or even the diamond for a couple of games. The loss of Rooney can't have helped, he may not always seem at the top of his game, but boy did we miss him yesterday. It's hard to judge our forwards performance when they had such little quality service. But as ever Hernandez put in the sort of display that makes you think he's better coming off the bench in certain games. Kagawa's name seems to have gone off the radar recently, and i'm not sure if he would have made a difference yesterday, but it would be nice to get him back in the thick of things.
I would have liked United to experiment in Turkey in midweek with top spot already sewn up, but i think we've got to put a stop to these pretty soft defeats. Three defeats out of our first twelve fixtures is too big a percentage, at our best we'd have come away with a point a piece from the lost games. Then again with the defensive injury problems we have endured, maybe second in the table a point behind the leaders is as good a position as we have any right to expect.
Yesterday's result was a double blow really, we lost the chance to really pull away from the rent boys and we have probably put real belief back into City's title campaign, as i said at the beginning of the blog, a bad day at the office.
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