I was surprised that chelsea could not take advantage of man united loss, as chelsea could only draw at west ham. the gap is now 4 points, not a big gap though. hopefully vidic and brown could come back over the weekend. rio, oshea and evans will be back at end of january. so far fabio is back playing against fulham and thats good news.
I hope fergie go out and buy a centre back in January as rio is always injury prone at this time of the year. rio been getting injury prone for the last few seasons. he might not make it to the england team for the world cup next year.
See this kind of match...heart pain ah. Rooney was off form, Anderson playing shit passes. Owen not getting service and positional sense was suspect. No creativity and flair at all.....Valencia at most is a above average player la.
God, this is unlike the United I always know......5 losses liao....haha.
Originally posted by zocoss:People have to realised that its a team sport... When one area is badly hit, it effect the others as well. Its not like just because the defence is in trouble the other department should be fine... If the defence can't cope with the opponent, it effects the midfield and the attackers from playing their usual game as well... Confidence is lost during this time and opponents are also encourage to go beyond their usual self.
We don't have to say much that not having the defenders right this moment is causing the drop of points... Even without a first choice keeper will effect the whole squad even with all the 1st choice defenders in place...
Its silly to even consider blaming Fergie for it... If anything, we should be pleased the team is still trying to survive this never before seen period... The first choice defenders are all injured... Even the sub defenders are injured which is rather unusual...
In my years as a United fan, i have never seen them having to play so many midfielders and even youth players in defence at the same time for a prolong period... Don't say its one player or two who are out of position. In the past few matches, we have seen midfielders like Giggs, Fletcher, Carrick, Gibson as defenders... And youngster like De Laet playing centre-back roles... And if this isn't enough, even the first choice keeper is out...
If United can survive this period... They can be champions again. But if they can't, then we have to accept that this was the moment they lost it... and not blame Fergie.
I understand that we are pushing our usual top midfielders into defence which hampers it since they are not really defenders. This is not an issue. No United fan went into the game expecting a clean sheet. Hell, I thought we would only achieve a high scoring draw since our strikers will bang in goals to nullify whatever goals was conceded.
Instead, I saw a team that was outplayed in every department (including our all-fit strikeforce and midfield). I simply do not understand how we could not get a decent chance (less than 5 shots on goal) in the entire 90 minutes of play. There isn't any attacking injury crisis is there? Didn't we play Valencia, Scholes, Anderson, Rooney and our beloved Owen (joined by Berbatov and Welbeck later)? I thought we did - so why do our so-called star players like rooney keep giving the ball away and seem contented to keep passing the ball back to already fragile defence?
United has been frustrating over the past 2 seasons. I hope Fergie will work it out somehow!
IMO, the players probably weren't sure of their roles in the formation that Fergie deployed.
When was the last time you saw Utd play with only 3 at the back?