After our recent run of fixtures I was quite confident going into this game, but when I heard of the amount of players missing on Friday, especially the loss of Carrick, that confidence subsided somewhat. It dipped further on learning of the inclusion of Falcao. Yet the thought remained that Mourinho might be quite happy with a point.
Lo and behold Mourinho set his team up as if they were away to Barcelona, meaning that United completely dominated possession. Whilst it was good to watch, we never really did quite enough with it. We only really created one clear cut chance, the cut back from Shaw that Rooney curled just wide of the post. Still they hardly created a thing either, so I was reasonably happy with our display. It's really something the way United are playing at the moment, when you compare our performance level with where it was less than a couple of months ago, it's almost like watching a different team.
The one big criticism I still have of Van Gaal is still his use of substitutions, they were bizarre, once more. Bringing on the hardly used Januzaj to go head to head with Ivanovitch, who is one of the best defenders around didn't help our cause. I'm a big fan of the young Belgian, but he seems like a lost boy at the moment. It will be interesting to see what happens to him in the summer. Taking off Shaw who had his best game for United and replacing him with Blackett was equally baffling, as Blackett was reluctant to overlap just when that was what we needed to do. I couldn't believe he didn't bring Van Persie on, he's on my summer clearout list but I would have brought him on for Falcao.
It was a sloppy goal that we gave away, disappointing given that we had defended reasonably well for the most part. So the game goes on the long list of games we didn't deserve to lose at Stamford bridge but somehow managed to come away with no points.
Lo and behold Mourinho set his team up as if they were away to Barcelona, meaning that United completely dominated possession. Whilst it was good to watch, we never really did quite enough with it. We only really created one clear cut chance, the cut back from Shaw that Rooney curled just wide of the post. Still they hardly created a thing either, so I was reasonably happy with our display. It's really something the way United are playing at the moment, when you compare our performance level with where it was less than a couple of months ago, it's almost like watching a different team.
The one big criticism I still have of Van Gaal is still his use of substitutions, they were bizarre, once more. Bringing on the hardly used Januzaj to go head to head with Ivanovitch, who is one of the best defenders around didn't help our cause. I'm a big fan of the young Belgian, but he seems like a lost boy at the moment. It will be interesting to see what happens to him in the summer. Taking off Shaw who had his best game for United and replacing him with Blackett was equally baffling, as Blackett was reluctant to overlap just when that was what we needed to do. I couldn't believe he didn't bring Van Persie on, he's on my summer clearout list but I would have brought him on for Falcao.
It was a sloppy goal that we gave away, disappointing given that we had defended reasonably well for the most part. So the game goes on the long list of games we didn't deserve to lose at Stamford bridge but somehow managed to come away with no points.
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