Man Utd (A) Sun 24/2/19

[VERBAL DIARRHEA]

This. We need to get our shit together now. Go on a run.

[Guest Alex_K]

Keita is the problem. Shaqiri, Origi, Sturridge .. are you going to moan about not getting a Michelin * meal out of a bag of Wotsits? Keita cost more than all of them together - then double it. He's offering nothing: he was awful against Munich, afforded all the time in the world while Mane & Salah were double-marked out of the game and he did nothing with it whatsoever. Milner - in that game - produced more probing passes in 15 minutes than Keita in 75. Couldn't even get on the pitch today in a game which - given we have Spurs, Chelsea & Everton to play - was really a must-win for the title. He's gone beyond being a huge disappointment towards being a huge liability, given the enormous % of our budget that was spent on him.

[TheHowieLama]

7 minutes ago, an tha said:

 

First 19 games we got 51 pts at an average of 2.68 per game.

 

A totally unrealistic ask to keep going at that rate to be fair but in the 8 since we have gained 15 an average of 1.88 a game - some drop off, that.

 

 

Stay in your lane, bro.

 

This is Woolster territory

[an tha]

1 minute ago, TheHowieLama said:

Stay in your lane, bro.

 

This is Woolster territory

Furry muff.

 

Can't argue with that!

[Bjornebye]

8 minutes ago, VERBAL DIARRHEA said:

This. We need to get our shit together now. Go on a run.

Agreed. @Rico1304

[VERBAL DIARRHEA]

6 minutes ago, Alex_K said:

Keita is the problem. Shaqiri, Origi, Sturridge .. are you going to moan about not getting a Michelin * meal out of a bag of Wotsits? Keita cost more than all of them together - then double it. He's offering nothing: he was awful against Munich, afforded all the time in the world while Mane & Salah were double-marked out of the game and he did nothing with it whatsoever. Milner - in that game - produced more probing passes in 15 minutes than Keita in 75. Couldn't even get on the pitch today in a game which - given we have Spurs, Chelsea & Everton to play - was really a must-win for the title. He's gone beyond being a huge disappointment towards being a huge liability, given the enormous % of our budget that was spent on him.

Huge fan of him but he has to start contributing.

[Guest Alex_K]

16 minutes ago, VERBAL DIARRHEA said:

Huge fan of him but he has to start contributing.

I think I posted something to the effect of 'people will be eating their words' when the criticism first started coming in for Fabinho & Keita at the beginning of the season .. well, Fabinho is looking like a very savvy addition indeed, but when your 60 million pound midfielder can neither displace the earnest  but extremely limited Jordan Henderson nor the likes of Origi - whom noone would take off our hands - in a title-charge defining fixture, there's a big problem with the player.

 

At a higher level, we have - despite some big buys - still spent a relative pittance compared to City -- and what we have spent has been generated by our own savvy buys-to-sell or bargains (Suarez, Coutinho etc.). It only took one big buy to go wrong in order to relatively destabilise our squad at the elite level we are competing ... as they may say in The Wire .. "how you never gonna be a little slow, a little late" .. one of the big signings was bound to go wrong eventually after several years of jackpots.

[clangers]

15 minutes ago, VERBAL DIARRHEA said:

Huge fan of him but he has to start contributing.

He just looks far too raw, not what we expected for £55 million, struggling to adjust to the lack of time and space, his distribution isn't good enough and he can be a defensive liability. We've seen an improvement over the last few games he's been involved but he's still looking a long way from being a trusted name on the team sheet. Hopefully given time to adjust he'll deliver although I personally think we'll be offloading him on loan to the French league in 18 months time.

 

[Nelly-Szoboszlai]

Origi should be the first go to attacking sub over Sturridge now. 

 

The latter is useless. Can't run. Doesn't press enough. His touch is off too. Shame. But he's not good enough anymore. Neither is Origi, to be fair. 

 

We need to blood Brewster over the summer and bring in a couple of attacking players. A striker and a creative wide player. 

 

Shaqiri has had some bright spots but lacks consistency. 

[Aventus]

8 minutes ago, Nelly-Torres said:

 

Shaqiri has had some bright spots but lacks consistency. 

To be fair he hasn't really been given consistent games, minutes or even playing positions though. 

 

Which is fine because that's what we bought him for, but I do think he'd perform better if he had a consistent spot in the 11 for a couple of weeks.

[Guest Alex_K]

Shaqiri's done really well for what we paid for. In yester-years market, he's probably the equivalent to an Assaidi or a Nabil El-Zhar. Clearly, we've had far more value from him than those players.

 

Sturridge .. I was really hoping we'd see a big year from him given the looming free-agency. Either his body is truly broken or he's just a lost cause that wont be repaired under any circumstance. Whichever it is - we're seeing from him the same we have for the past 4 years now - which is fuck all.

[Bjornebye]

Aids

[Dr Nowt]

The contract year thing with Sturridge was always buying into the mythical attitude problem angle rather than his body being rooted.

[A_S]

I would laugh my arse off though if the reds won the title by a single point (with a negative GD of 30 compared to City) and the mancs missed the top 4 by the same. It'd put this result in a very different light to how it's being portrayed right now. 

 

Yeah Liverpool didn't play well and Klopp has more faith in Sturridge still that most supporters by now. Similar to the Bayern  game (but worse) in that a lot of promising moves fizzled out due to a poor final pass (Milner the main culprit). 

 

The 'brave' manc narrative is a bit much though, fucking hell. It was mentioned in the commentary that they'd used a virtually unchanged midfield of Matic, Pogba and Hererra across all competitions since the change of manager. Lo and behold, they pick up some injuries. 

 

And I'm sorry, good management is not forcing an injured player to play, then cry unlucky when he gets injured again! Imagine Klopp had rushed Lovren back for the Bayern game and he re-injured himself instead of shuffling his squad around? Surely you adjust tactics around that. 

 

Fair play though, they got a draw at home, having had to scrape their squad for a 70M forward, another cunt on 400k p/w and one of their starters up front. So brave. 

[Bjornebye]

55 minutes ago, Dr Nowt said:

The contract year thing with Sturridge was always buying into the mythical attitude problem angle rather than his body being rooted.

But but... he was boss 5 years ago ? Alongside the 2nd best player on the planet at the time 

[Jairzinho]

5 hours ago, Dr Nowt said:

In my opinion if Sturridge and Origi are ineffective every time they play this isn’t a pattern indicating we need better than them in reserve, because we’re only allowed to focus on each individual performance in isolation as they don’t relate to one another.

 

This was actually the start of the Shankly quote "...that's how I see football...etc"

 

Having back up players that are so shit that the front three can never be rested, nor can they provide said front three the slightest competition for places, is another completely irrelevant point because Firmino didn't play well in the 30 minutes he was on the pitch yesterday.

[aRdja]

4 hours ago, Jairzinho said:

This was actually the start of the Shankly quote "...that's how I see football...etc"

 

Having back up players that are so shit that the front three can never be rested, nor can they provide said front three the slightest competition for places, is another completely irrelevant point because Firmino didn't play well in the 30 minutes he was on the pitch yesterday.

Why would anyone want to rest any of the front three against United at Old Trafford? 

[Jairzinho]

2 minutes ago, aRdja said:

Why would anyone want to rest any of the front three against United at Old Trafford? 

They wouldn't. Why would you infer that's what I wanted us to do? I want us to be able to do it against the shit teams in the league, of which there are many. We can't do that, however, because Origi and Sturridge are terrible. They should have been fucked off in the summer, and we should have bought a forward that could actually be useful to us.

[Bobby Hundreds]

Ahhh new day. That was shite yesterday really really poor unimaginative, non composed bag of shit. It's a bit worrying the mentality of such a lacklustre performance with poor decision making after poor decision making.

 

Look at our points haul and where we are it's mad really. I don't think we've played like a better side than last year, but the facts say otherwise. The swagger has gone unless the sun shines and the opposition say here do what you like to do best.

 

It's just hard to get too grips with this side. It is a brilliant side one of the best we've had but they let themselves down often. They really need to mix it up a bit more, repeatedly hitting high balls into a box where the opposition deal with them easily is just dumb.  We need more football brains in the side, we've skill mixed with graft but look dumbfounded too often. 

[aRdja]

10 minutes ago, Jairzinho said:

They wouldn't. Why would you infer that's what I wanted us to do?

We started the game with our regular starting attackers, who would’ve been fresh as they only had two games in 2 weeks prior. They had no excuse not to perform yesterday. Bobby had half an hour, so I’d be okay to let him off, but Salah and Mane had the full 90 minutes. The former was so bad, he was destructive to our play and Klopp had to take him off the pitch. Those are the players more deserving of our wrath, and trying to deflect it to the back-up just seems a bit... for the lack of a better word, cowardly to me. I agree that we need a better back-up, but that’s more a discussion for the Summer 2019 Transfer Window thread IMO.

[VladimirIlyich]

9 hours ago, El Rojo said:

Surely Origi would have been a better bet than Sturridge for a first half introduction? 

My thoughts precisely. Or are we so desperate to get money for sturridge that we are trying to put him in shop window?

[RobbieOR]

2 minutes ago, VladimirIlyich said:

My thoughts precisely. Or are we so desperate to get money for sturridge that we are trying to put him in shop window?

 

He's out of contract in the summer. 

[VladimirIlyich]

3 minutes ago, RobbieOR said:

 

He's out of contract in the summer. 

Thank god. No excuse then.

[Jairzinho]

17 minutes ago, aRdja said:

We started the game with our regular starting attackers, who would’ve been fresh as they only had two games in 2 weeks prior. They had no excuse not to perform yesterday. Bobby had half an hour, so I’d be okay to let him off, but Salah and Mane had the full 90 minutes. The former was so bad, he was destructive to our play and Klopp had to take him off the pitch. Those are the players more deserving of our wrath, and trying to deflect it to the back-up just seems a bit... for the lack of a better word, cowardly to me. I agree that we need a better back-up, but that’s more a discussion for the Summer 2019 Transfer Window thread IMO.

Yes, cowardly. Excellent stuff. 

[VladimirIlyich]

We were doing ok until Firmino went but when he did the attacking options just faded away. I love Mane but he was very poor too.