January - A time for rotation

Rotated not rated

This is my favourite part. Imagine thinking Manchester United press high for 9 minutes, let alone 90.

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Let alone three seasons worth of 90 minutes!

comment by Lurker - "We did it on derby day" (U21432)

Are we Bruno FC?
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Pretty much. We rely on individual brilliance, especially his.

I expect Bruno and Rashford to be on the bench on Saturday, and you can bet they'll be brought on in the 2nd half if we're not winning.

comment by The Red Side™ (U11275)
posted 18 minutes ago
This is my favourite part. Imagine thinking Manchester United press high for 9 minutes, let alone 90.

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Let alone three seasons worth of 90 minutes!
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comment by manutd1982 (U6633)
posted 2 hours, 39 minutes ago
From June 24th against Sheff Utd to July 13th we played 5 games and had the exact same starting XI in every game, in the finals 3 games after that we made only 1 or 2 changes to our starting line up and never rested any of our offensive players from the start. That's called not rotating and it caused our player to tire especially considering how often we were playing after the restart.
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Yep. I’m not arguing that.

I said that:

- The allegation that Ole has shown disregard to his players’ health and well-being for three seasons is complete and utter bollox

- He rotates no less than your average top flight manager, which is demonstrable fact

- We didn’t suffer from fatigue or a drop off in our performances before the last few games of the league campaign.

Everyone said the same on that last point at the time, I agree. I did it too, and it did impact our performances. I actually thought we should have binned off the EL and just played the fringe players and U23s through the August mini-comp, and I still believe that now.

As far as the run in goes last season though, ultimately it a) did no damage to the players that I am aware of (I await Lurker’s empirical evidence demonstrating how severely Ole has crippled his squad over the last three years), and b) actually worked because results-wise, we were the best team in the league, even over the last few games.

People would have been chucking toys like Ritalin-deprived, sweetie-stuffed problem toddlers if Ole had rotated in James, Lingard, Dalot and Ighalo in the run in and we’d dropped points and finished fifth.

He’s got better tools to rotate with now, so hopefully we shouldn’t see that same drop off at the end of the season.

Though, we are still very reliant on Rashford and Bruno in attack, so we’ll need others to get into some form so those two can have their minutes managed as well.

comment by Donny The King van de Beek (U10026)
posted 7 minutes ago
He’s got better tools to rotate with now, so hopefully we shouldn’t see that same drop off at the end of the season.

Though, we are still very reliant on Rashford and Bruno in attack, so we’ll need others to get into some form so those two can have their minutes managed as well.
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Yep, the reliance on Bruno is the troubling one.

Rashford I’m sure wouldn’t have been as heavily leaned on if we’d seen Martial *or* Greenwood hit a really good run of form. We desperately need one or both of them to hit a hot streak in the very near future.

We also need VdB to come in for Bruno and demonstrate why everyone has been screaming about him not playing. He can’t have signed thinking he was going to play every week in his first season, so he’s going to have to demonstrate to the manager why he shouldn’t be dropped. Come in for Bruno and show the boss he can do the job as well or better, or at least so well that he forces Ole to play him more often or elsewhere in the lineup.

VDB needs to do more, but I don’t think Ole’s helped him with the lack of minutes. He’s often getting sub appearances when there’s no time to get into the game.

I don’t think he’s all that suited to how we play anyway. I said as much in the summer when I wanted Grealish instead.

He’s got talent, but he looks more of a system player, one that thrives in a pressing team with one and two touch passing, and we don’t play that way.

That’s stating the obvious given he came from Ajax, but he doesn’t look individually a great player within that whereas someone like Ziyech did, for example.

Still, he could end up being a good squad player for us and I’d like to see more of him in the team - wherever in the side that may be.

comment by Donny The King van de Beek (U10026)

He’s got talent, but he looks more of a system player, one that thrives in a pressing team with one and two touch passing, and we don’t play that way.
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And this is why Ole will keep playing Bruno, he has the individual quality to create goals.

Beek is about passing, movement and interchange between players. And we're not coached properly in this.

He’ll keep playing Bruno because he’s a much better player, and our best one. That would be the case even if we were better coached, every manager plays their best player every game. Pep’s probably the best coach in the world, and notorious for rotating his team, but doesn’t with KDB.