Manchester United are ‘moving in the right direction,’ says one fan. But another is ‘furious’ with the Wolves win and one still wants Ruben Amorim gone.
There is a split among Manchester United supporters, and more thoughts on Mo Salah.
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Have some perspective
Long long term reader and very occasional mailbox contributor.
I wanted to write in after the West Ham game but of course we went on to draw that, so I had to wait for the waves of negativity and knee jerking to pass. So here it goes after just beating Wolves (no understatement in saying one of the worst teams in premier league history).
We are 15 games in and Manchester United are currently 6th in the league, just outside CL places albeit at the head of the very bunched mid table. We could easily drop back to 10th or worse over the festive season given three of our best performers are off to AFCON shortly. We’ve been infuriatingly inconsistent and had some horror show performances and results.
Our new signings all look promising in their own way. Mbeumo is a ready made premier league grade performer. Cunha feels like he should have done more by now, but you know the quality is there, as is the attitude (more on that later). Sesko offers more that he gets credit for and I’ve no doubt he will be a success for the long term whilst Lemmens provides a semblance of competency and calmness in goal which is more than we could have wished for in years.
In parallel we’ve shipped out a lot of the dross and replaced players with disproportionate egos with players who at least look like they want to fight for the shirt all while lowering the wage bill as well as the average age of the squad (again – attitude, it’s everything in life).
Our training facilities have been rebuilt and we are clearly doing “a lot of the right things” by installing the right people in the right roles. Apparently we’re evening taking data analysis seriously, just a decade or so late.
Who knows what kind of a dumpster fire INEOS rook over when they first walked, but I’m willing to bet it was chaotic, shambolic and full of egos in the dressing room. Am I saying they’ve got every decision right? Hell no. But it takes time to turn a cruiseliner around. Did anyone think we’d seriously challenge for the league this year? If you did, you’re delusional. Have the Grimsby, Everton and West Ham setbacks been highly frustrating? F**k ya. But that’s no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Settle down folks. Enjoy the journey. We’re moving in the right direction but it’s not linear. There will be setbacks. There will be poor performances. But overall, there will be progress. Surely you can feel that? Can’t you feel the reduction in chaos?
Trust the process. Ah sh*t.
Brian C. PS: Do check the PL table one year after Arteta took over at Arsenal for perspective (that’d be December 20th, 2020).
Why Manchester United should be ‘furious’ with that win
Interesting game yesterday, worth staying up for in the end. However it actually served to highlight just how far away this team is from champions league mentality.
A situation like that, where you have an opponent so demoralised and wretched comes around once every few seasons. It’s a golden chance to rack up some serious goal difference. One looks at the league table will tell you that goal difference will be critical this season.
Instead, United got the game won and just coasted to the end. No urgency, no realisation of the opportunity that was still there. When the assistant signaled 9 minutes to go, you would expect a surge to try and really make the most of it but it just fizzled out.
It’s this attitude that tells us United are not ready to actually go for it. They are coasting by default, and they have talented players so that will get you to a certain point. That internal switch has not flipped to activate the ruthlessness and determination needed to compete at the highest level. You need to relentlessly pursue every edge to succeed. At 4-1 against that Wolves team you should be furious that you conceded one and didn’t score more. Until they figure that out, they will always remain an inconsistent nearly team.
Akillies
Would anyone else keep Amorim? (Sent before they won)
Just watching United against one of, if not the, statistically worst performing teams to grace the Premier League. And it’s been reasonably even, a bit scrappy. United somehow keep leaving spaces wide in their own box despite having 5 defenders, and also conspire to have no actual goal-threatening options when attacking from out wide.
And of course placing Casemiro with Bruno in the middle means little-to-no control centrally. The system makes the absolute worst use of this group of players. And it’s simply proven. Amorim’s win percentage isn’t bad for a Manchester United manager – it’s bad for a relegation candidate manager. It should be utterly unimaginable that a club with United’s ambition would persist with someone this bad. And yet. Here we are, with many pundits saying no matter what Amorim has til the end of the season. My point is simply: why?
Every other club in our league would have fired him by now. What is it that INEOS, or the board, or United fans believe makes this club different? He was a good hire, with a good profile, excellent at the media but he was hired to do one thing: win football matches. And he’s undeniably a huge failure. So why can’t we just be like literally every other club and try someone else?
Ryan, Bermuda (the United way is youth and risk taking, not long tenure of managers)
READ MORE: Man Utd ‘schoolboy’ to anger Keane, Bellingham and everyone else by starting for England vs Croatia
That non penalty
I support United and I just can’t help but find that non penalty hilarious. The Premier League is in real danger of becoming WWE. They are doing it for the drama.
Zdravko
I’m really intrigued to know why the first handball in the penalty area was not a penalty yet the second almost identical incident was a clear and obvious error?
In the context of the game it probably won’t get many column inches but this is exactly the issue VAR needs to resolve to prevent it ruining a big game.
Jon (Cape Town, it’s only Wolves but Utd are slowly and visibly improving from this seasons evidence so far – still a long way to go…)
Salah thoughts from a Gooner
It’s hilarious for me to see This Means More Football Club implode in this fashion. But in all seriousness, all Jamie Carragher did with his riposte – staged for TV in the same fashion he criticized Salah for, I might add – was make things even worse for “his club”. In my opinion.
Last I checked – the existence of Salah in a Liverpool shirt has brought the first ever and a second PL for Liverpool (after a 30 year wait that engulfs Carra’s career – but, yes, this is “his” club) and a Champions League (and multiple other opportunities to add more). Other players were necessary for this to happen (list your VVDs, Manes, Hendos, Wijnaldums, Firminos, Trents, Robbos, and, yes, Origis here) but does this not begin and end with Salah?
The rise of Liverpool predates Alisson and Van Dijk – it was Salah who began to uplift the club from also-ran, Gerrard-slipping bottlers to the status they have now with his insane 17-18 season. Without him the team that was built around him never happens. Klopp knew what he had and acted accordingly.
But I somewhat digress – the point is this: what has Salah said that literally every supporter in the media, on Twitter, in this mailbox or in private hasn’t said?
Slot is sh*tting the bed – why should Salah watch KONATE (????) and Gakpo and even MacAllister (who while still not playing well has finally stopped being completely sh*t, at least, fair f***s) play every week regardless yet he – who won both POTY awards *checks notes* 6 months ago – has to watch them? Because Slot thinks he knows what he’s doing when he hasn’t shown an inkling of how to arrest this slide? Why are the results – the same way they were happening before – stil happening when Salah’s off the pitch?
Is it Salah’s fault that Slot won’t start Chiesa instead of Gakpo on the left? Or Rio. Or literally anyone else from time to time, at least?
Is it Salah’s fault that the form of Konate and VVD leave you thinking they are angling for a step down to a Championship team?
Is it Mo’s fault the midfield is as formidable as soggy bread?
Is it Salah’s fault that Slot keeps benching Liverpools best player so far this season (Ekitike) to get in the more expensive guy who clearly isn’t up to match fitness?
No, it’s not. And all Salah did – in not the best way, admittedly – was question why the clearly overall best and most impactful player in the squad (Salah, duh) was being benched by a manager who is failing to get the basics right.
Don’t get side tracked by Mo talking about what he’s done for the club because he clearly wouldn’t care about being on the bench if Liverpool were, you know, not continuing to play like shite while he is unable to do anything about it. Think about it – what did Salah say that Carragher wasn’t lamenting about on that candid CBS camera that caught him during the PSV match? Was Carra not saying to someone in the phone that Slot continuing to start Konate was a sackable offense?
All Salah did was do what every other Liverpool supporter doesn’t have the power to do and put these issues – because they are issues – front and center in front of everyone but particularly the board of his club. And it’s not like he’s stupid enough to think his words wouldn’t cause a big deal – it’s obviously why he did what he did in the fashion that he did it in.
Knowing he could get crucified – he stuck his neck out for what he thinks is best for the club. Which is moving on from this manager which, in turn, is something many, many Liverpool fans including Carra himself has suggested might be the way forward. For a large contingent of Liverpool supporters who don’t think this manager has what it takes – he spoke for them.
And he’s getting slayed for it like this? It’s ridiculous and goes to show how players just sometimes can’t say anything without being judged to the highest of extremes.
And he should give the finger to the board – they just spent 400 million to not improve the team! What is everyone on about?
MAW, LA Gooner (Carra insinuating he was a nobody and Liverpool made him is absurd. He came in and promptly broke the PL single season goal record – how’s Isak for 80 million more doing in this regard, btw – and immediately made them contenders for a trophy they had yet to win going back 25 years. Absurd.)
We were on a break
I see that FIFA has introduced standard water breaks for each game at next year’s World Cup, under the banner of player welfare. The breaks will take place regardless of the time the game is played and the temperature, so it definitely seems more like a chance to run more ads rather than player safety. After all, if player safety was a real driver, why not have it in a country where extreme temperatures isn’t a concern?
This is all pretty much what we expected as FIFA marches more and more towards money over sporting endeavour. After the spectacle of the draw/peace prize giving, a lot of people on here wrote about boycotts and Infantino being the worst. I agree that he is the worst but I can’t ever see him being deposed from his current position as he has the overwhelming support of the majority of the federations. I remember back in the 90’s it was as easy for a European team to qualify for the World Cup as the Euros, such was the relative strength of the European countries and the way the competition was set up to favour the strongest teams qualification. As the years passed and competition numbers expanded the tournament became more inclusive but the standard probably dropped overall. This was probably unwelcome from a European and South American perspective, but very welcome in the rest of the world (where most of the people live).
The highest level of football is now the Champions League (itself a slave to money/broadcasters and the big teams), but the World Cup is where kids fall in love with football. To play Devil’s Advocate, the watering down of the quality of the World Cup is good for football in general, as it will draw more and more people into the game from more and more countries. Seeing people who look like you play in the World Cup is a big deal.
I agree that the price for it is hard to stomach, ad breaks in the middle, glad handing autocrats, dead rubber group games, Saturday evening ITV level entertainment for the draw, opening ceremony and pre-Final (can someone tell UEFA as well that no one wants to see the pre-Champions League Final ‘entertainment’), and venue selection made based on maximum revenue. You can boycott if you like, and I certainly will watch a much lower portion of games this time round, but we are a drop in the ocean from a commercial aspect, so don’t expect it to change much
Derek from Dundalk