1 hour ago, erskblue said:

Agreed.

I will admit I hoped but never honestly thought they would get an equaliser last night.

I last checked at 90+3 and assumed they won, so resigned myself at least we're still in 4th. 

Imagine my delight when by accident I found it was a draw an hour or so ago. Made my day.

Huge letoff. We now simply must win tomorrow to pile the pressure on Leicester. If we win tomorrow they would need at least a win against one of United, Spurs or Shieffield regardless of our results. Not easily done. 

Southampton has one of the best coaches in the league, with the limitations he has, he manages a better record away from home than Man Utd, Man Utd who was a team throughout the season playing only and only counterattack.

It is true that Man Utd's moment was good, it is the team with the most points won in the last games, but it is necessary to know how to evaluate.
Bruno's impact, Pogba's return and some positive results boosted confidence a lot and that manages to win games, but it won't always win them.

Solskjaer remains the coach and despite a stronger eleven, he is still poor football and with many players of questionable quality.

Brighton and Southampton have better coaches than Chelsea and Man Utd.
Which is something incomprehensible to anyone who watches football.
But football rarely wants something with reason.

In spite of all this, Man Utd continues to have the most favorable clause and the competition will surely lose more points than they do, continuing to be the big favorites to finish in 3rd.

It is the possible race within a large set of Greek tragedies.

27 minutes ago, Mr. President said:

Brighton and Southampton have better coaches than Chelsea and Man Utd.
Which is something incomprehensible to anyone who watches football.
But football rarely wants something with reason.

In spite of all this, Man Utd continues to have the most favorable clause and the competition will surely lose more points than they do, continuing to be the big favorites to finish in 3rd.

It is the possible race within a large set of Greek tragedies.

City are taking the piss...got away with cheating and now have the hump about being accused/people wanting them to be punished in the first place. Take your 'win' on a stupid legal loophole and fcuk off.

So barring a astronomical collapse our rivalry with The Dirty Leeds can recommence for a season at least (and hopefully at most). 

Wigan are absolutely destroying Hull this evening ... SEVEN NIL up at HT !!!!

Obviously quite motivated to stay up even if they do get a 12 point deduction for going into administration ...  ?

 

22 hours ago, Deino said:

I hope Frank lets the B team play Bayern. There is no way we are going to overturn a 3 goal deficit with the way we are right now

Absolutely not, you should never throw in the towel when there's technically a chance no matter how small.

18 hours ago, Gandalf Greyhame said:

I cannot comment on the w**kfest. Every club has an irritating section of gloaters who think their club is the second coming of Pep's Barcelona after winning a game or two. United has more fans than most clubs, so it follows that there will be more gloaters and irritating fans. If you're pissed, it's probably rightly so. We're definitely better than the surprsingly smug folks over at Foxestalk or the cringey clusterfeck that is RAWK, but those are very low standards.

Also, yes, we have had years of transition and yes we are the second highest spending club after Man City since SAF left. But a lack of success despite that is a damning indictment against the management at the highest level (read: Woodward) and the managers who couldn't make that investment count for diddly squat (read: Mourinho). Woodward showed a big wad of notes to everyone, and he got swindled by his own managers. We've pissed money away like anything, yep. But to judge Ole's transfers you should consider Maguire (overpaid by about 30m), AWB (underpaid by about 10m), Dan James (a punt for the future at 15m, but not ready right now) and in the January window - Bruno Fernandes (who's been a revelation since he joined).

After adding Maguire and AWB, defensively we're the third best side in the league (35 GA) behind Sheffield United (33 GA) and Man City (34 GA) without being the defensive outfit we were under Mourinho. As for Bruno, I think his numbers speak for themselves. Ole hasn't been properly backed yet, and he's done very well with the signings made so far. 

I don't agree with the harsher circumstances, either. For instance, from your list - Pogba missed 39 games due to his ankle injury from September last year till the restart, Rashford missed 12 games this season, and was out for almost a month and a half with his back issues. Since the restart, he's not looked like himself. Similarly, Martial missed 14 games, too. United don't have the squad to deal with such injuries to key players. Without Pogba, there was no creativity from midfield at all, without Rashford we had no wide goal threat (no RW at the club, but that's another story) and without Martial we didn't have a striker. Matic blows hot and cold - any run of games leaves him knackered very easily, and De Gea has had his worst season for United since SAF left (he's arguably cost us more points this season with individual errors). Fans of every club bar Man City will feel that their backups are terrible, but unless you've had a season where you've been forced to provide 118 combined appearances (6880 minutes) to the world-beating trio of Jesse Lingard, Andreas Pereira and Dan James - I would argue that you don't really know how poor United's backups to the starting XI are. It was torture to see our one or two decent players being double marked while the rest of them made buffoons of themselves. The only reason we were a counter-attacking team was because we had no creativity to break down a defence at all, and every team with a low block nicked points off us very easily till Bruno came along. 

He has flaws, too, obviously. He's very late and passive with his subs, and sometimes he's too ambitious for his own good. We should not played our first teamers for 120 minutes against Norwich in the cup - it is coming back to haunt us now. Even now he should be resting the likes of Martial, Bruno, Matic and AWB against you lot in the semi-final, but watch him field his knackered best XI and get another injury just in time for that Leicester game. He is also too stubbornly faithful - he stuck with Lingard way more than he should have and we lost Angel Gomes as a result. We should have dropped De Gea for a game or two after his horror shows of late, but he persisted and De Gea promptly dropped more points for us (see him not coming out to claim the ball in yesterday's corner). 

Like I said, it remains to be seen if he can actually win silverware with United but the squad is a shambles thanks to the wrecking ball of a manager we had earlier and the ineptitude of the recruitment but Ole is the first manager who's shaping the squad in a positive way. There's a togetherness to the team, we try to play positive football and we have some great results under him already. His man management is a far greater asset than his tactical ability. The restart has been the first time that Pogba, Martial, Rashford and Bruno played together.and we scored 14 goals in 4 games. 1 point from 3rd with 3 games left in the season is quite a remarkable achievement for Ole considering the players he had available throughout this season and we still have the Europa League left. 

 

Come on, I'm sure you would take your position over ours, you might say that now, but if you were offered Pogba injured, or transfer ban, you know full well what you would pick. No doubt Pogba's injury effected your creativity, but when I look at the United squad you seem to have more depth than we do, why is Juan Mata still in the side if he's able to offer that? 

I can't subscribe to the idea that Ole had a harder job than Lampard did this season, it's just not true. Before the start of the season how many people predicted United would finish above us? I'm predicting the overwhelming majority did, and the ones who didn't were optimistic Chelsea fans. Bottom line is, Ole shouldn't be behind Chelsea, he got the privilege of buying Fernandes because he wasn't producing the results and instantly you were firing, Lampard never got those privileges. Even in January he was essentially asking for new players but the board didn't want to splash the cash since we have a history of bad January signings. 

I can see what you're saying, you've just had some horrible years under Mourinho and now you're finally starting to see things click, and some positive play. But honestly, you should still be doing a lot better, with the money spent and still grasping for a top 4 finish just isn't good enough. Ole isn't the man for that job in my opinion, neither were the last 4 managers actually. Whoevers making the majority of the decisions at your club needs booting (Woodward I'm guessing) because the recruitment has been terrible. I thought Chelsea were bad, that season we signed Morata, Bakayoko, Zappacosta, Drinkwater, etc. Now that was a bad wasn't it? It's been like that at United since Ferguson left, I can only name a few players you've signed that have been worth the money, fortunately for you, the majority of them are still playing for you now, so it looks like things are looking up. But still, if Ole has you competing for the title next season I'll be surprised. 

3 hours ago, Argo said:

Absolutely not, you should never throw in the towel when there's technically a chance no matter how small.

We are 3-nil down on aggregate chasing for Top 4 against a Bayern side that is well rested, have just won the Bundesliga + DFB cup and are committed to getting another Treble in a time where Real and Barca are in a transition of sorts. 

You really think we can win it scoring 4 and shutting them down? With the current group of players? 

 

 

 

5 hours ago, Slojo said:

Come on, I'm sure you would take your position over ours, you might say that now, but if you were offered Pogba injured, or transfer ban, you know full well what you would pick. No doubt Pogba's injury effected your creativity, but when I look at the United squad you seem to have more depth than we do, why is Juan Mata still in the side if he's able to offer that? 

I can't subscribe to the idea that Ole had a harder job than Lampard did this season, it's just not true. Before the start of the season how many people predicted United would finish above us? I'm predicting the overwhelming majority did, and the ones who didn't were optimistic Chelsea fans. Bottom line is, Ole shouldn't be behind Chelsea, he got the privilege of buying Fernandes because he wasn't producing the results and instantly you were firing, Lampard never got those privileges. Even in January he was essentially asking for new players but the board didn't want to splash the cash since we have a history of bad January signings. 

I can see what you're saying, you've just had some horrible years under Mourinho and now you're finally starting to see things click, and some positive play. But honestly, you should still be doing a lot better, with the money spent and still grasping for a top 4 finish just isn't good enough. Ole isn't the man for that job in my opinion, neither were the last 4 managers actually. Whoevers making the majority of the decisions at your club needs booting (Woodward I'm guessing) because the recruitment has been terrible. I thought Chelsea were bad, that season we signed Morata, Bakayoko, Zappacosta, Drinkwater, etc. Now that was a bad wasn't it? It's been like that at United since Ferguson left, I can only name a few players you've signed that have been worth the money, fortunately for you, the majority of them are still playing for you now, so it looks like things are looking up. But still, if Ole has you competing for the title next season I'll be surprised. 

I would defeinitely take our position of injuries over a transfer ban, yes. We'd be an absolute mess if we did not have Maguire, AWB or Bruno. At one point in Decemeber, we were wondering if we could actually get relegated - if Bruno hadn't come around to save Ole's skin, he might not have survived with Poch available. Ole could have done better with the squad he had, yes, and again, Lampard has done very well relatively, of course. I don't think many United fans truly expect us to challenge for a title anytime soon - there's a long way to go and even we're skeptical if Ole's the man for it. He's definitely the man for the transition. After 7 years of retrying, we finally got half the puzzle right. 

I would still disagree about squad depth - Mata has lost even the little glimpse of pace and strength he once had and even Angel Gomes had more strength in physical duels than he did. Class player, but he's done in this league. We wasted his best years on the right flank in a dysfunctional team. We would have loved a player like RLC or Barkley or Mount to be able to come off the bench instead of him. Let's just agree to disagree about squad depth. 

Perhaps there is an element of bias in our unwavering support for Ole - would you blame us for defending a club legend who's now the manager? And you're right about Woody being terrible at recruitment - every summer there's talk of a new DoF, and every summer Woody somehow manages to remain the money man making footballing decisions. Things are looking up right now, however, and it would be brilliant if we could actually make it to 4th and get Sancho done over the line. We haven't had a genuine right winger since Ronaldo, and I am confident that he would have a Bruno-esque impact and finally stop the left side of our attack from being double marked. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/53417773

The Premier League summer transfer window will be open for 10 weeks between 27 July and 5 October.

8 hours ago, Deino said:

We are 3-nil down on aggregate chasing for Top 4 against a Bayern side that is well rested, have just won the Bundesliga + DFB cup and are committed to getting another Treble in a time where Real and Barca are in a transition of sorts. 

You really think we can win it scoring 4 and shutting them down? With the current group of players? 

As i said it doesn't matter how unlikely it is, you never admit defeat while there's still a chance no matter how small, it goes against every aspect of the culture we've built at this club in the modern day and if Lampard effectively tells the players he doesn't have faith in them that could have dire long term consequences in terms of their mindset.

What if we play a scratch side Bayern play awful and we win 1-0 on the night? We'd be forever kicking ourselves knowing had we actually played our best team we may well have done it. Furthermore at the stage of development our team is in, even making some form of a tie out of this (like say what Liverpool did to us in 2009 after we twatted them at Anfield) will be a massive boost going forward.

We are not beating Bayern simple as, having said that put your strongest team out to see how mentally strong they are.

What's the plan now for the CL if we are playing Bayern does that mean all the of other legs will be played. 

That being the case when will the next season kick off?

Liverpool v Chelsea match to be made free-to-air- by Sky.

https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11661/12029150/liverpool-vs-chelsea-and-premier-league-champions-trophy-lift-to-be-aired-free-on-sky-sports

5 hours ago, Argo said:

As i said it doesn't matter how unlikely it is, you never admit defeat while there's still a chance no matter how small, it goes against every aspect of the culture we've built at this club in the modern day and if Lampard effectively tells the players he doesn't have faith in them that could have dire long term consequences in terms of their mindset.

What if we play a scratch side Bayern play awful and we win 1-0 on the night? We'd be forever kicking ourselves knowing had we actually played our best team we may well have done it. Furthermore at the stage of development our team is in, even making some form of a tie out of this (like say what Liverpool did to us in 2009 after we twatted them at Anfield) will be a massive boost going forward.

Or they thrash us 7-0 and we may never recover from it and we suffer multiple injuries to key players. 

I hope it goes your way. 

48 minutes ago, Deino said:

Or they thrash us 7-0 and we may never recover from it and we suffer multiple injuries to key players. 

I hope it goes your way. 

They won't thrash us 7-0.

15 hours ago, Deino said:

We are 3-nil down on aggregate chasing for Top 4 against a Bayern side that is well rested, have just won the Bundesliga + DFB cup and are committed to getting another Treble in a time where Real and Barca are in a transition of sorts. 

You really think we can win it scoring 4 and shutting them down? With the current group of players?

We wouldn't have to shut them down ... they could score once, and if we get our 4 then we are through on away goals ...

Low odds admittedly, but this competition last season looked all over for Tottenham and Liverpool when they trailed Ajax and Barcelona respectively by three goals ... especially for Spurs as they were still 3 behind early in the second half of the second leg  ...

4-1 away win for us is 150-1 with Skybet if you fancy a flutter ?

What a goal by Jimenez.

Wolfs ahead

Wood just missed a sitter

Pen!!

penalty for Burnley

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