ScepticalStan

I thought that the talk of dropping Pelle prior to the Swansea game was ridiculous (and despite not scoring, I'd say he was excellent again), but for this one I actually agree with you both. I think in terms of tactics it wouldn't be a bad idea to simply try and replicate the job we did on them last season. The teams that have caught them out this season are the ones who simply don't bother with the long ball and just try and break fast and with pace.

Hm. You say that as if "top-10" has any sort of regularity or status. It doesn't. It means nothing. West Brom managed to finish something like 11th, 10th and 8th in three consecutive seasons recently. Would we think of them as a 'top-10' team? Would we have considered them to have a status above the likes of Stoke, Norwich, West Ham, Leicester or ourselves? The reality is that there's the big 6, then there's Everton, and then there's the rest of the league who are all much of a muchness. We don't merit any more attention than any other club in the league I'm afraid.

Leaving a likely scenario of City, United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Everton and Leicester as the rest of the 1/4 finalists. Too strong a pool really. Indeed, I'm dwelling on it but the chance was last year in the Carling Cup and the year before in the FA Cup when not only did we have stronger teams than we do now, but the draw had really opened up for us with big clubs being knocked out left, right and centre.

Villa at home. Winnable, loseable, meh. Now hopefully some of the big teams will run into each other...doesn't look like it so far.

Not his fault at all. Martial was about 8 yards out. If VVD (or anyone else in his position) doesn't throw himself in to try and block the shot then Martial just belts it in with his left foot rather than having to turn onto his right. It was well-taken to be fair. One of those situations where the striker can actually force the defender to commit. It looks bad on the defender but trust me, VVD or anyone else in his position couldn't possibly have done otherwise.

Not sure about this. Koeman sees them training day-in, day-out and I'm concerned that we might have another Vergard Forren on our hands, where the manager/coaches just don't think he'll make it and have realised they've made a huge mistake signing him. Cedric has looked poor and above all, weak and really not that quick in every non-Vitesse match we've played. Whoever we put there, its a massive, massive weakness until we sign a new RB. Same with LB until Bertrand's back.

What kind of acid do these kinds of attackers use and how do they make/obtain it? I mean you see some of these attacks and the effects can be so hideously brutal that you wonder where on earth anyone could get such a corrosive form of acid from. It can't just be toilet bleach, but it does seem very accessible considering the way its become a sadly, quite common form of extreme assault.

Quite a few pretty glaring errors there. Stek should be a touch lower with Forster higher, VVD could/should be at maybe 79 or so but Fonte should be roughly 75-76. Mane should be our best player at roughly 81 or so.

Would you consider those who complain about Chelsea and City's exorbitant and unchallengeable wealth to be 'bitter'? Or would you demand that they just shrug and put up with it as well? Because there is fundamentally no difference whatsoever between generating support, shirt sales, advertising revenue and ultimately financial clout and success on the pitch through Wang Lin and Dong Shong in Shanghai as there is Paul and Ian from Woking and S****horpe. Its all generated from the same lazy, glory-hunting, disloyal, bandwagon-jumping trait of human nature. United fans are OK with one because it suits them, and not with another, because it doesn't. I'm just pointing out their hypocrisy. And considering that the vast majority supported United in the first place because they wanted to attach themselves to the club that they hoped would effortlessly waltz to title after title, but are instead going to have to 'learn their place and their limits' in the same manner that they hoped/expected everyone-else-but-them would have to, its very enjoyable.

I think one of the most depressing things about this season, (Just to give some perspective, my prediction has been that we finish 12th-14th), is that we probably aren't going to trouble or give much of a bloody nose to any of the big clubs as we have done for the past two-and-a-half seasons. We're in the Aston Villa/Newcastle-ish kind of bracket of being just about good enough to stay up, but simply having too weak a squad to not be effortlessly brushed aside by the big four/six. I wouldn't be remotely surprised if we don't get a win in any of our matches against the big four. I'd be happy eking out a point or two here and there.

Hmm. Great support but its largely been earned through having years upon years of success to brag about and enduring no real hardship as a football club. Barcelona have excellent support as well, as do Bayern Munich. They're essentially just thoroughly spoiled. Nothing bad about that if your fans are from Manchester, but a ****tonne of them are of course, from absolutely nowhere near. They support United because they're the biggest, bestest and greatest club in the World(®)* I sometimes like to confront United plastics by telling them that if I were to say that I were a Barcelona fan and I remember watching when 'we' beat United in the CL final 3-1, this would be no less ridiculous than the United fans from Woking saying the same thing regarding Man U. It also gets my goat when their generic response to 'We support our local team' is 'you support your local ****', because that's precisely the point fans are making. United are a big club and have had fortunes to spend largely because the of the absolute mass of glory-hunting ******s that abound on this planet who don't want to knuckle down and earn success at a local level, but instead, ride the coattails of those who've already earned it; and when United come out with chants like that which essentially defend precisely that attitude, it really does reek of hypocrisy when they criticise City for being the new beneficiaries of football's globalisation which is of course, owed to exactly the same thing. This is why Manchester City are almost a second team to me now. Everyone else has to deal with supporting a local team who has a cap on what it can achieve, except for United who want to be the best and most successful club forever whilst saying that they deserve their higher spending power by pointing out that its all because they've been successful in the past (knowing full well that absolutely no-one can possibly challenge their repeatedly inherited 'footballing wealth and success'). This of course, can only really be challenged with the injection of endless trunks of money; the kind of which that City and Chelsea have brought into the league. And whilst it may have come from afar, its owed to precisely the same contemptible human trait of bandwagon-jumping, glory-hunting, fickle, smug-****ishness-that-needs-to claim-victory-for-something-that-has-nothing-to-do-with-them that United would be (and for a long time, were) more than happy to be the beneficiaries of if it favoured them. A friend of mine in China sent our Whatsapp group a picture of five young men all in a row, all with 'Kun Aguero' on the back of their City shirts at a bar in Shanghai. United's fans from Reading, S****horpe, Plymouth, Cardiff and Bristol (that they're quite happy to embrace) are absolutely no different to the Chinese glory hunters. So it looks like United will, delightfully, have to come to terms with the fact that they too will have a 'station' in football above which they cannot possibly hope to progress. Something that they would have no problem with whatsoever if it weren't for the fact that they probably won't be uncontested at the very top ever again. Just over two years ago I made a smug and confident prediction that City and Chelsea would win at least 8 of the next 10 Premier League titles. Something I've been reminding United fans of ever since. Looks like that prediction is down to 6 of the next 8 and very probably 5 of the next 7. I'll be very interested to see how they cope with my being proven right. *Yes, I realise that most of the away fans who get to the front of the queue for tickets are indeed Mancs.

This is a very good video illustrating the pointlessness of using immigration to help the world's poor and unfortunate. Immigration policies should be set exclusively by the needs and requirements of the host country.

This, I'm afraid, simply isn't true. White Brits are now the minority in London and the vast majority of those are either from a middle-to-upper-class background or young professionals working very well-paid jobs in the City. The white working-class is evaporating from London very quickly. The Labour majority in London is largely down to the huge immigrant and ethnic minority presence.

We managed to get 'Mane Mane Mane etc. Sadio-oh-oh-oh' going at his first game away to Arsenal (to the tune of Ole/Ole) Since then we've gone with the usual seven-nation-army copycat crap.

Good wholesome, family club. Some on here might think that you need a decent percentage of thugs and miscreants ready to smash the town up to give your club that little bit of 'edge' but meh, you need some Fulhams and Norwiches among the Millwalls and Cardiffs. Good club.

Had a good game today and in a way, you can see why he can impress managers in training so often. Given time and space he can spray the ball around very nicely indeed, and its hard to deny the boy has talent. Trouble is that in an 11 vs 11 match against tougher opponents his massive repertoire of weaknesses quickly comes to light. Does deserve credit for today's win though.

Don't be a mong. Nothing wrong with Koeman. The simple fact is that our players are of mid-table Championship level ability and will promptly and unceremoniously relegated without very strong, immediate reinforcement. No manager in the world could or would have got much more out of this lot than Koeman has desperately tried to. Yes, seriously. This is our ability level at the moment.

Ok, well, whilst you guys try and come up with something he's very good at, I'll just wheel off a list of things he's very, very, bad at. Winning tackles Winning 50-50s Winning headers Using his left foot Beating players Scoring goals Not even scoring goals but shooting from distance with enough power and accuracy to be some kind of vague threat Taking free-kicks of any kind Outpacing players or beating anyone in a 50-50 foot-race Playing a through-ball to get an assist Intercepting the ball and cutting out counterattacks Playing one-twos and actually controlling the return pass

Can't be bothered to sift through the match/post-match threads, just wondered.

Targett exposed again. Burned for pace, ball delivered straight across the fave of our goal

Trouble is, for all this stuff about 'we don't want players to leave' and 'we should force them to stay' and whatnot, we actually...erm...shouldn't want to do that. You want to be a good stepping-stone option for up-and-coming players. If we sell Mane for £25Mn for instance, we'll have essentially been paid £15Mn to have him play for us for a season. Whilst it might hurt your pride when they leave you don't want to stop that from happening.

People on here seem to be defending Targett on what appears to be purely emotional grounds, as well as the idea that as he's young, they morally 'ought to'. It looks like its got to a stage where no-one is actually, when you get right down to it, able to deny that he's a massive weakness at the moment. Regardless of whether or not you think he could improve to a level where one day in the future, things might be different.

No, but Claude Makelele had flawless vision, perfect awareness, and could pass accurately first-time with both feet over more-or-less any distance. Victor isn't anywhere near his equal in those attributes. As such, the question "well what's he like going forward?" is a reasonable one. The fact that Neymar is thin-as-a-pin and yet is a world-class striker for Barcelona and Brazil doesn't mean that physical strength isn't normally a useful attribute for a striker.

Does anyone else see Wanyama as pretty-good-but-not-that-special? I certainly don't think he's good enough for any of the big four. His passing is mediocre and he adds very little going forward. Can't score goals, can't really beat a man. Defensively he's solid as anything I grant you, but I'm just surprised that there's *that* much interest in him.

Do you ever, ever, ever think that even the slightest degree of disappointment from the fans is even slightly justified? We've been beaten 3-0 at home by a side that we beat by that scoreline reversed in the same fixture 8-9 months ago. This is the second season where the best players have all left after a strong season simply because the big clubs can triple their salary/offer them worldwide exposure in the Champions League. We realise that we're in the Premiership and last season managed to reach our highest ever position but to watch your squad be repeatedly decimated as soon as you hit the oh-so-glorious high water mark of 7th is depressing, and for a lot of people, they justifiably ask themselves. What's the point? The Premiership is very quickly turning into a financial arm-wrestling competition. You don't get 'upsets' in arm-wrestling; the strongest man wins. Its that simple. And when you have to watch your best players leave, time and again, it really brings that fact home. Its a shame. Its unexciting, its boring and its inevitable. http://www.newstatesman.com/lifestyle/2015/08/vanishing-underdog-what-premier-league-tells-us-about-england "You can learn a lot about England from English football. From the treatment of the Football Association you can see our unending tolerance for establishment incompetence. We might not like them, we might complain about them vociferously, but do anything about them? Pass." "Perhaps the most telling indicator of the English character however lies in our Premier League and how the English have cheerfully embraced it since its inception. This is because what the Premier League has done is to teach us to accept a lack of mobility and an established status quo in what ought to be a meritocratic and dynamic system. In other words, we know that the title will be won by one of maybe two or three clubs when the season starts and we know that this will be true next season, and the season after that. We know that nothing can happen to a top four team that they cannot buy their way out of."