I think the progress we've made under Mourinho is: We win the ball back when we don't have possession very well. We move the ball forward much better and we actually try and attack the opposition goal. In terms of our performance, we are good in 2/3 of the pitch. There's far more depth to the options we now have in midfield. The squad overall is very good imo. Where we still need to improve: 4 points better off but still dropping points unnecessarily. Failing to take advantage of our rivals dropping points. Labouring to victories in games against sides we really should be beating more convincingly. We fail to open up defences, even when we play counter attack. Our final pass still lacks enough creativity, we still don't have strikers who run behind a defence, opting to play in front and try and their force their way through. Still no settled starting XI
As an outsider, I pretty much agree with what you have said. Your defensive record is pretty decent, third best in the league in fact, after ourselves and the Spuds. But you are lacking a killer instinct up front. Ibra has been decent and has bailed you out but when he hasnt performed you have struggled. Too many home draws when people park the bus, similar to Chelsea back in 2014
Yep we rarely craft an opening where the defence is being pulled apart. We're forcing the ball through in that final third. And when we're not doing that we're putting crosses in aimlessly relying instead on the probability it might fall to one of our players in the box. One more thing, we rarely do anything from set pieces particularly corners (Rooney's freekick really was unique for us these days). In fact EVERY corner is aimed at Ibrah.
To sum up; we need to bury more chances. I'm unsure of the solution as Zlatan is our only real source of goals so he has to stay as centre forward. We really need more goals from either side of him so that's Martial, Rooney, Mkhytarian and Rashford/Lingard needing to up their game. Pogba and Herrera have to score more too. I don't really see a problem other than that as the defence is sound and we do create chances. As for the actual question, I'm reserving judgement until the end of the season as that's the only actual way we can measure progress. Other than my eyes telling me we're better than last season and the one before.
I appreciate what you're saying @glazerfodder but it's not that simple. There's converting great chances and then there's converting poor chances. The goalscorers at Arsenal, Liverpool and Spurs arent better than ours. They're not better finishers necessarily. You have to look at the chances they're creating. They're creating far more time and space to shoot from. And they're getting great service in the right areas in the box - often running onto a ball rather than ****ing around trying to pull it out between their feet with 3 defenders around them! You give Rashford, Martial, Mata, Mkhytarian the space and time and service the likes of Arsenal, Livpl and Spurs are creating for their forwards/ attacking players and I guarantee they'd be finishing more of them.
We're not going to win the league so the aim surely os to get into the CL by one way or the other and kick on? If we do that and win a cup or even two it's progress so what's the problem? If we don't then I'll also be pissed off but it's February and we're in a good position to do the above. What I do wish isn't that we'd have at least tried to score a couple more towards the end instead of silly pointless passing paterns.
Was annoying but maybe trying to conserve a bit of energy or avoid injury as this month is pretty hectic cup wise. We only have 1 more league game this month and could well end up having to play catch up all over again.
That's goodTrebs. You posted this seconds before United scored their first goal. It seems the team responds to your criticism
It's only one fewer than the rest, apart from City who also only have the one game. They won't play premier league games on the weekend of the next round of FA cup but after that they will. Spurs, City and Arse still in it though so it's not like our immediate top 4 rivals will gain any ground. The City game still hasn't been rescheduled though. That could end up right at the end of the season mid week.
