Player Ratings v Arsenal

Rosso,

I mean... I watched the game!

My point was, in the context of the way the game was, I thought Herrera did some excellent but unnoticed work helping Young, who you rightly rated highly.

As for the press, I was referring to specific instances where Arsenal would work the ball down the flanks - mainly their left, and then play the ball back into midfield 5-10 yards outside of our penalty box. We were slow at times to get out to them as Arsenal's overloads had caused a bit of uncertainty. Nobody seemed to know who should press. There was a couple of times when they nearly got in that way, too.

Haha, sorry mate!

I agree with your last para, yep. It's something we did very well under Jose, and have done pretty well under Ole to date (not that we've needed to be doing nearly as much because we haven't spent 60 minutes of every game camped on the edge of our own box since the change in management!).

Not tonight though, you're right. There was a hesitancy, and if the Arsenal midfield had any creativity to it, that might have caused us difficulties. But they were so, so poor going forward.

We might be doing Arsenal a discredit - they keep the ball very well and were the home side, but they were quite blunt, to our fortune.

I've actually liked seeing us having to play without the ball a few times recently. It's shown another side to Ole's approach. Where he's done well is achieving what Mourinho didn't/couldn't: danger on the counter.

It's now as if the players see not having the ball as an opportunity to go and score a goal on the break. I'm actually off to OT on Tuesday night - hopefully this isn't the game in which we stumble, but it's bound to happen sooner or later.

Yeah, now the players are allowed to play lower percentage passes in the transition, we can move the ball much, much quicker. It's good to watch.

Apart from the obvious (Pogba) in that situation, I think Sanchez will benefit from that. Though I think he's being playing that way a bit anyway. His assists to minutes stats have been very good when he's played this season. Great goal today too. Think he's been given too much stick (not by United fans) because he has a huge wage and isn't the most personable character. He can't be faulted for injury. Could be a big asset going forward, and not even an auto first choice by any means

Lukaku only a 7? Won everything in the air, held up play briliantly, and two excellent assists.

Thought Pog was very good for you guys too, once he gets a bit of space he's so good at covering ground with the ball - albeit we did make it easy with over-commiting forward.

comment by rosso is facking happy (U17054)
posted 2 hours, 19 minutes ago
Yeah, now the players are allowed to play lower percentage passes in the transition, we can move the ball much, much quicker. It's good to watch.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Nah low percentage passes weren’t ever something we couldn’t do under Mourinho. The way we cojnter is different.

His teams rely on the ball to the cf to hold up, which we could’t do, or the wide man collecting it deep and carrying it long distances.

Nah we are moving it shorter, quicker and with more bodies going forward which is why we can counter properly now.

We’ve never had the players for Mourinho counter attacking football.

Just the usual:

good players (pogba, lukaku, sanchez) were good, average/competent players (matic, lindelof, martial) were average/competent, and the crap ones (herrera and lingard) were crap.

Most worrying was taken off two of the three better players and leaving lingard and herrera out on the pitch. It's almost as if an attempt to grab defeat was too tempting. That did make it all a bit scarier.

comment by Ed The King Woodward (U10026)
posted 6 hours, 17 minutes ago
comment by rosso is facking happy(U17054)
posted 2 hours, 19 minutes ago
Yeah, now the players are allowed to play lower percentage passes in the transition, we can move the ball much, much quicker. It's good to watch.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Nah low percentage passes weren’t ever something we couldn’t do under Mourinho. The way we cojnter is different.

His teams rely on the ball to the cf to hold up, which we could’t do, or the wide man collecting it deep and carrying it long distances.

Nah we are moving it shorter, quicker and with more bodies going forward which is why we can counter properly now.

We’ve never had the players for Mourinho counter attacking football.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I think low percentage passes were restricted in more ways than one.

You're right about the traditional Mourinho counter, with the out ball over the top (not only his target man, but also the way we set up without a number ten or second striker effectively put paid to that approach) and wide men carrying the ball from deep.

But if you look at our counters from central areas or with the receiving wide man covered, we'd more often than not see the counterattack binned, the ball move backwards, and a shift to a possession-retaining more careful transition. We didn't have fullbacks, wingers and number eights supporting the counterattack and bombing on to balls in the inside or outside channels.

Now we're much more likely to see that. We've had Lindelof, Matic and others trying diagonals and slide rule passes to players in limited space between the lines and running into gaps in exposed defences. A large part of the reason for that, as you say, is the licence of players to get forward.

I think in a way we might be arguing the same point, but I don't think we'd necessarily have seen the Mourinho counter attack of Real (with the midfield pair of Alonso and Khedira, for example) or Chelsea (with the midfield pair of Matic and Fabregas, for example) unless he could have found a way to get Pogba to work successfully in a two. Which, IMO, is impossible.

rosso, yep I agree with that. I think we are kinda making the same point, as you say.