Great start to the weekend

I have no sympathy, he was paired with Giroud and Welbeck for years and still played football properly, for half the wage.

<laugh

Ffs. Laughing too hard to get the smiley right

Yep agree on Sanchez. For me, as his legs have gone, he needs to be deployed in the false #9 role. He's still got good movement and can still finish - we saw that tonight.

But he couldn't get past his full-back. There was a moment earlier in the game where he'd pulled away a little bit, turned to face him up, but didn't run at him or try and take him on. The Sanchez of old just skins him, or at least tries. He does too much of his work with the ball in front of the defenders, whereas he used to have that ability to go past players by himself.

Like I say, he's still got the movement, so playing up front would make his clever, short runs off of defenders more effective.

Berba, yep I know the exact moment you are talking about. Lukaku was running in at the back post in that move as well. Old Sanchez would have burst past and put it on a plate for him.

I don’t think it’s just about the position either I think it’s the type of game. He doesn’t even suit counter attacking football anymore when he was one of the best. We actually need him and the team pushed up around the box if he’s going to be able to influence games.

I’ve not seen a player turn this bad overnight since, ever.

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There's something about age as well, Dave.

If you look at the age profile of our most derided players, you'll tend to find it's those moving through and past their 'peak years' that receive the most abuse.

I'm not arguing that they've been world-beaters (how many of our players have in the last ten seasons?), but Valencia, Young, Matic, Ibra, Rooney, Carrick (in particular) and others going further back have and did often put in much better performances than they received credit for, with fans deciding that these elderly statesmen had seen their best years and, then blinded to their contributions, willing them out of the door, often hoping for them to be replaced with completely unproven and inexperienced kids.

Carrick played his best football in his thirties. Rooney was completely written off when he still had a very important role to play. Young very, very rarely lets us down and is still performing comfortably better than we should expect of or have seen from Dalot.

Now you know me; I am a (very) big champion of the youth system, of blooding our young players and maintaining what is one of the most important traditions of Manchester United. But it makes no sense to replace all of the great experience, consistency, cool-headedness, tactical nous, discipline, etc. that the senior players bring to the squad with kids at the earliest opportunity.

Fergie knew better than *anyone* that you need a balance; that you need the older players around in the dressing room, on the training ground and on the pitch on matchday to help the youngsters in the moment keep their heads in the game, and in the longer term to look after them, to teach them, to lead them, to bollok them, to act as role models.

Young is a baffling one for me. He's a blatantly obvious candidate for a contract renewal. Not to play at RB or LB every week, but because of the holistic value he delivers as a squad member.

On the match day threads in particular it seems people can only acknowledge their favourites.
There's one who every poor ball from Rashford elicited a "ffs gashford";
Others are FFs Lukaku
or whoever they don't like at the moment.
If said player does something good it's
"about time" still garbage though, we need better.
It's as if we have to sign a world class player for every position, and another for backup.

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