Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Preston North End 1-3 Manchester United

Through to the next round, but yet another dull unsatisfactory performance. Van Gaal rang a few changes, playing to the crowd by bringing in Herrera into midfield and putting Rooney back up top alongside Falcao. Well he pleased a lot of reds if my twitter line was anything to go by. Why that should be, I have no idea.
I think an awful lot of reds are just sheep, if something is going wrong, just change the players. Obviously players are a part of the problem, but as I have been banging on and on about, it's also Van Gaal's systems and the way he wants them to play. You just looked at the line up and it screamed, no width. As sure as night follows day, you knew what kind of performance we'd get, and we got it. It was only when Young was brought on, that we really started to get much joy.
I'm not really convinced by Herrera, he hasn't really been given a fair crack of the whip, that's true, but when he has played he hasn't really looked like the real deal to me. Yes he tries to be inventive, but hasn't really ever done anything that's made me sit up and say wow. On the debit side, he's almost as slow as Blind and is just as lightweight. Let say we bought a Vidal, Strootman, Pogba or whoever in the summer, where would Herrera fit in our best eleven next season then. A midfield two of Blind, good squad player, no more and Herrera isn't frightening to anybody.
We had a lot of possession during that first twenty minutes or so, but yet again to what effect. And anyway, surely against Preston of division one, we should be dominating possession. I felt a bit sorry for Di Maria, he seems to be very in and out with his form at the moment. But yet he seems to have been given the task of sole creator in that role at the tip of the diamond. It's as if nobody else is allowed to create, other than trying to create space by passing the opposition to death. Contrary to Keown's absolutely atrocious co commentary, he did actually put a couple of decent passes in, but neither Rooney or Falcao could get on the end of them.
And now we come to the front two, Rooney was alright, nothing special, but compared to what we've seen from Falcao and Van Persie recently it was an improvement. The Falcao situation is starting to become just plain embarrassing. What on Earth does his agent Mendes have over United, because I'd struggle to find a place for him in the under 21's at the moment.
I have to admit when they got their slightly fortunate opening goal, I wondered whether we'd have it in us to turn it around and actually win the game, because it hadn't happened so far this so season as far as I can remember. Yet again it was Fellaini to the rescue. Am I alone in finding it bizarre that Van Gaal's only response to going behind to a third tier team is to resort to long back post crosses to Fellaini. Is that it?
So Arsenal at home, we've surely got to start playing better than this if we're going to be ending the season on a high.

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