Men's Soccer (Football) Thread Soccer • Page 474

Oh fuck me we’re playing the early game today?? I’d rather United ruin my evening than my whole fucking day.

 

I really hope ETH still gets sacked even if we somehow still shithouse a win.

 

Dalot, Evans and Maguire?

 

That "midfield" (if you can even call it that...). Proper end of days feeling today.

Ultimately that line up shows why ten Hag is going to be fired. No attempt to change the set up, to address any problems in the team. Like me on Football Manager, just change the players and hope for the best.

 

Not defending ETH in the slightest, but much like FM, wouldn't it be difficult to implement a tactical shift in minimal time? That's the sort of thing that HAS to be worked on, right?

I can only imagine what would happen if United turned up today v Villa (who are riding on a crest after beating Bayern BTW) and deployed a new system.

 

Oh completely. Which we saw with Ole at the end. Randomly switching to a back 5, zero cohesion, and getting walloped. With ten Hag, it's been clear for over a year now that his zero midfield, just vibes, formula doesn't work. He's had plenty of time to implement a change in system, to work on other things. We saw it very, very briefly with the 4-2-2-2 at the end of last season, then that was abandoned. Today is a culmination of the last year of stubbornness. Even trying something and it not working, at least it would show willingness to fix the problems. Just repeatedly trying the same thing over and over is infuriating.

Having said that, United will probably win today and make everything I've written obsolete. But still.

 

He’s only had two years to do so.

 

Probably the best header I've seen in years.

 

Nah honestly he has changed system we are ,funnily enough, better in nearly every single way than last year. Defensively more solid, midfield only really opens up into a chasm some time rather than for 90 minutes every game. But it’s just straight up not good enough. We’re going away to Villa and playing Eriksen and Mainoo in midfield, that’s just not strong enough defensively. Bruno has free rein to do fuck all every game and never get dropped. Amad is being played as a touchline winger when he’s best in the half spaces. Dalot is inverting to midfield which leaves Licha FUCKED whenever anyone runs at him. Rashford doesn’t track back enough to make up the difference in defence. Both CB’s are told to stand up into midfield to cut out attacks early but that’s often leaves us short at the back. We invite the press onto us through the keeper and Licha holding onto the ball too long but there’s not enough possession focused players in our team to take advantage of actually baiting the press. We get past it once, lose the ball and our team is out of defensive shape (see Dalot in midfield), one CB steps up to try snuff it out, they’re passed by and an opposition player is running directly at Licha.

and now we aren’t playing Licha, it’s a 36 year old Evans they will be running at.

 

You also massively outdid your actual performances last year. On almost every metric, you should have been even further into midtable, like 10-12th. So, you might be better, but that might still only be good enough for 8th.

 

We’re massively underperforming this season in an attacking sense though. Our underlying stats for the most part have been much much improved on last year. Remove the Spurs game and we’re on par defensively. I know removing a game isn’t ideal because the game happened, but that was a wild outlier. Even the Liverpool game wasn’t as bad.

 

if you could, I would bet the house on Villa scoring from their right hand side today. Bailey is going to have a field day.

 

Eriksen on a yellow already is certainly going to help!

 

Konsa injured to further cement my dogshit FPL week

 

same. so many points on my bench too.

 

Customary centre back injury

 

Bit bizarre that Eriksen got booked for the first foul of the game and Villa have got nothing for the subsequent 5 fouls they made

 

And then Maguire gets booked for that? This is wild.

 

3 yellows 4 fouls. 0 yellows 6 fouls. Mainoo actually got booked for Tielemans standing on him.

 

Mainoo too now

 

I was too quick off the blocks, there it is

 

#SouthgateIn

 

Even when we’re not losing we lose

 

tbf two naked center backs would greatly change the game